Description

Description

Since it was first introduced more than two decades ago, Salesforce has catered to several business enterprises belonging to all scales of operation and all sectors of the industry. The platform of Salesforce is still going strong by providing automation in handling CRM activities and saving considerable time spent by the marketing and sales team of an organisation in carrying out various business processes. The key function of Salesforce CRM is to allow the users to record, store, process, organise and assess the valuable customer database hosted by a business organisation. It helps the sales team in making sense of huge volumes of customer data that seems complicated. By implementing the platform of Salesforce, you can manage your leads, chart out specific marketing campaigns and undertake effective communication with your current and prospective customers. There are several tools and components within Salesforce CRM that are dedicated to provide specific services to the users according to their requirements. Salesforce is also a highly customisable platform. Irrespective of the size of your business, the business processes you want to automate and the customer you are catering, Salesforce offers a platform that can be tailored according to the specific needs, requirements and preferences of the clients and the customers they are catering to.

SALESFORCE AND THIRD PARTY INTEGRATION

This customizable nature has provided Salesforce with an ability to integrate with suitable third party applications. Salesforce would readily integrate with a number of applications, ultimately increasing the functionality of the platform. This allows Salesforce users to avail benefits and services of both Salesforce and the application it integrated with from a centralized platform. This integrated platform would provide the users with an ideal blend of services that would relieve them from switching between platforms, thereby saving the time and effort put in by the clients. The majority of these integrations are undertaken when Salesforce allows third-party vendors (ISVs) to build software applications using the platform of Salesforce. This would improve the services availed by the Salesforce users and increase the consistency of Salesforce itself. Almost all the applications developed within the environment of Salesforce are readily available on Salesforce AppExchange. These applications are readily available for users to install and start operating with minimum programming. All they need to do is configure the platform according to their needs and start using them. There are numerous Salesforce integrations that are undertaken for several specific activities carried out by a business organization. One such important integration is the one that involves payment gateways for Salesforce Payment Processing.

INTEGRATING PAYMENT GATEWAY WITH SALESFORCE

Securing payments is arguably the most important aspect of conducting sales. Once you have made all the efforts in persuading the customer and delivering the product/service to the, receiving the payment brings you to the end of closing a sales deal. However, in the age of digitization, the process of receiving payments should be given special attention. Though digital payments have made fund transfer faster than ever, there are high chances of unauthorized access and failure of payment. There are several efficient payment gateways in the market that allow the customers to make secure payments to the sellers by adding necessary financial details. An average business organization has to make and receive a number of payments on a daily basis. Especially if you are an e-commerce company, it is important to keep a track of all the customer payments you received. As a business organization, if you choose to receive and make payments through the platforms of multiple payment gateways, keeping a track of all the transactions can get a little messy. There are multiple payments coming in from multiple sources and it becomes tedious for your sales and accounting department to organize these receipts in order to make periodic reports.
To get rid of these issues, it is recommended to use the Salesforce Payment Gateway by integrating Salesforce with the payment gateway of your preference. This would provide a centralized approach to the process of receiving payments through the chosen cyber payment gateway. This integration would allow you to accept all the major credit cards through which you are likely to receive payments. However, the biggest advantage of integrating payment gateways with Salesforce is the fact that it would automatically record all the transactions into the CRM database. If you receive payment from a lead that is stored in the system and is already nurtured by your team, the transaction would automatically link the payment to the concerned lead. This helps in organizing the manner in which you receive your payments. Integration of Salesforce with payment gateways would also leverage Salesforce credit card processing. Once you integrate a payment processing platform with Salesforce, it would accept all card payments the business’ local currency. Moreover, this integration would allow you to load all your accounts on a single payment gateway account. Simply put, using the platform of the Salesforce payment gateway would act as a funnel to direct all your payments on to a centralized platform.

BENEFITS OF PAYMENT INTEGRATION WITH SALESFORCE

Here are some of the major benefits pertaining to using centralised Salesforce payment options as a business organisation:

Receiving Faster Payments

As mentioned earlier, integrating payment gateways with Salesforce acts as a funnel that directs payments from multiple sources on to a centralised platform. The database stored in Salesforce plays an important role for you in receiving and managing your payments.
Your sales team has already tended to the leads recorded in your CRM database. All their major details have already been fed into the system. This makes the process of receiving payments through Salesforce easier and faster. Unlike using independent gateways, Salesforce Payment Gateway would help you in matching the receipt with the customer almost immediately, facilitating quick transfer of funds and maintaining an efficient record of the same. Also, as you already have majority of the customer details, they will not have to provide every single detail for every transaction undertaken with you. This would result in hassle-free and convenient payment from the customers’ side as well.

Obtaining useful Customer Insight

Salesforce essentially functions on the principle of giving customers the utmost priority. All the services provided by the platform are tailored to suit the specific needs of the customers. This implies that you already have enough information about the customers you are catering to. If you tend to integrate payment gateways with Salesforce, you can obtain a 360 degree view of your customers. Using this integration, you can track an individual customer’s purchase history and the amount they spent buying your products on a periodic basis. You can ascertain details such as the declined payments, refunds, accounts standing and scheduled orders pertaining to each of your customers. This is how the platform of Salesforce would automatically keep a track of all the payment- related activities of your customers, helping you ascertain how loyal a customer is. Using this information, you can reward certain customers by providing them with exclusive offers and discounts, creating a win-win situation for both the parties.

Increased Control On Payments

Once you have integrated payment gateways with the platform of Salesforce, you have more control on the manner in which you receive payments and configure your payment options. Using the centralised platform of Salesforce Payment Processing options would give you the power to modify the payment options according to the changing needs of your customers. If you are offering services for which subscription payments are made on a periodic basis, you can opt for setting up a recurring payments model or schedule your payments according to your preferences. Also, this integration would allow you in reconciling errors without going on to an external system.
The platform of Salesforce would allow you to make necessary configurations before or after receiving payments through Salesforce payment gateway. You can also choose to set up a unique proprietary billing system or create a virtual terminal interface on the website of the payment provider you are integrating with. This would in turn provide you with considerable flexibility in managing your payment through Salesforce.

Increased Security

When it comes to making or receiving payments, ensuring security becomes the topmost priority. If you choose to integrate your payments with Salesforce, you would also increase the security of the payments being made by your customers. As you are setting up an integrated payment gateway that removes an intermediary between you and your customers, it considerably decreases the exposure of sensitive information shared by your customers. Also, the platform of Salesforce itself is developed giving importance of complete security of information. Salesforce developers, administrators and operators are trained to maintain 100% security of all the information provided by the customers. However, it is advisable to integrate with a payment gateway that
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undertakes tokenisation of information. If a company is tokenising information, it is replacing critical information (such as credit card details) with tokens. This considerably prevents any unauthorised access to the information as it solely resides with the processor.

Increased Automation and Accuracy

There are many business organisations that still resort to traditional manual methods of keeping a track of payments. On integrating payment gateways with Salesforce, you automate majority of these processes, ultimately increasing the accuracy with which the payments are processes and recorded.
Salesforce monitors all the data you possess and prevents any scope for duplication of information. As soon as a payment is made, the system would automatically link it to the concerned lead, contact or Account, recording the transaction in the database in real time. This reduces the scope for human error to a great extent, facilitating seamless transfer of funds.

SALESFORCE STRIPE INTEGRATION

Stripe is a prominent payment gateway often chosen by online sellers for the purpose of credit card processing. The platform of Stripe can be easily integrated with Salesforce to improve the process of receiving and managing payments from customers. You can approach a reliable integration partner that would help you undertake efficient Salesforce Stripe integration to optimise your payments.
Here are some of the key features of Salesforce Stripe integration you should keep in mind before going ahead with the integration.

Creation of Intelligent Reports

The integration between Stripe and Salesforce would lead to a perfect blend of services provided by both the platforms. You can easily bring in the data pertaining to your Stripe accounts (accounts receivables, payment history etc) to Salesforce CRM. This data can then be used to create informative and intelligent reports providing a clear picture of the performance of your sales team. Moreover, you can save sufficient time as the platform of Salesforce would provide considerable in syncing the data and creating relevant reports.

Triggering Marketing and Sales Activities

By integrating Stripe with Salesforce, you can view all your Stripe payments (pertaining to bank accounts and credit cards) on Salesforce in the form of native data. This information can be further associated with the details present in the CRM database by matching them with relevant leads, Accounts and contacts, triggering further productive actions taken by the marketing and sales teams.

Transparent Viewing of Payment Methods

Along with viewing the Stripe payments, the payment methods used by your Stripe accounts can also be transparently viewed on the platform of Salesforce. This would further allow you to use the Salesforce Payment Processing methods stored securely in the system to charge customers for any additional payments made in future.

Accessing and Modifying Stripe Contacts

On integrating Stripe with Salesforce, you can associate all your Stripe contacts with the Salesforce Accounts and Salesforce Contacts. This would provide your sales team with customer data that is wholesome and centralised. You can now use Salesforce triggers on the contacts imported from Stripe in order to undertake necessary transactions. A common platform for all the contacts would also make it easier for your team to manage payments and keeping a record of the same.

SALESFORCE AUTHORIZE.NET INTEGRATION

Authorize.net is another prominent gateway used by customers in making online payments. You can choose to integrate the data between Salesforce and Authorize.net to provide your employees with a centralised platform for accepting all payments pertaining to debit cards, credit cards and ACH.

Here are the key steps involved in undertaking Salesforce Authorize.net integration explained in brief:

• Firstly, add the URLs pertaining to Authorie.net (https://api.authorize.net and https://apitest.authorize.net) to the remote settings of your Salesforce billing organisation.
• Now, add the records with the name of AuthorizeDotNet and the Gateway Class name of adnblng.AuthorizeDotNetAPI to your custom settings on Salesforce.
• Finally, create a suitable payment gateway using these fields:
• Name of the payment gateway: AuthorizeDotNet
• Gateway type: AuthorizeDotNet
• API Log in ID: As provided by Authorize.net
• API transaction key: As provided by Authorize.net
• Active: Selected (in case of active gateways)

SALESFORCE PAYPAL INTEGRATION

PayPal is arguably the most popular and prominent payment gateway used across the world. Through its services, PayPal has been successful in making financial services democratic and empowering numerous businesses to thrive in the global market. Salesforce PayPal integration can hugely benefit you as a business, especially if you are functioning in the e-commerce industry. This seamless integration would allow PayPal to bring in its top-class features on to Salesforce that would lead to an increase in sales and a reduction in operating costs.
The components of PayPal and PayPal Credit would provide you with features such as PayPal Express Checkout from Cart, PayPal Express Checkout from PayPal Page, IPN, In-context Checkout and many more.

With this ideal mix of PayPal and Salesforce CRM, you can ensure seamless management of payment from all your revenue sources. This integration would not only offer ease of payments to your customers but also increase the functionality of Salesforce.
Read more about Salesforce Consulting Services and Salesforce Integrations services at Techila.