Migrating from Salesforce to Dynamics CRM 2011 (and 2013) – Top 3 Tips

Making the switch from Salesforce to CRM is not without its pitfalls, but with the right planning and preparation it can be made a much smoother process. Using past experience of Salesforce to CRM migrations, I have put together my top 3 tips to aid in a successful migration:

Tip 1 – Salesforce dropdown lists vs. CRM options sets

Within Salesforce, dropdown lists have the notion of ‘active’ and ‘inactive’ drop down list values. This notion does not exist in CRM, so planning must include detailed dropdown list to option set value mapping. If you need the same values from Salesforce in CRM you will find the lists very long, and once the client logs in they will say “We did not have this many list values before”. This is because you now have all the inactive dropdown list values from Salesforce in CRM. It must be decided if the older inactive dropdown list items should map to a more generic option set value of “Legacy” or similar, or use JavaScript to hide the values on the form. The latter approach does involve custom JavaScript development so of course is best avoided, if business rules will allow.

Tip 2 – Salesforce “Record Types”

Within Salesforce there is the notion of a ‘record type’, which drives a lot of form functionality, and also subsequent business rules. Let’s say you had an account that could be a type of “Supplier”, or type of “Client”. When creating a record in Salesforce it will ask which type you would like the account to be, and based on the selection you will be presented with a different form, and also different rules applied to the form. Again, this notion does not exist in CRM so it will either have to be replicated via customisation or planning must be done beforehand to agree on a uniform form layout for all record types.

Tip 3 – Salesforce Advanced currency management

The multi-currency functionality in Salesforce differs to CRM, and this must be taken into account. Salesforce will allow currency exchange rates to be set for individual fiscal periods, and those rates apply to all opportunities within that date range and currency. So let’s say you changed an exchange rate retrospectively for the Euro in a fiscal period last year: all the opportunities in Salesforce within that time period and set to Euro will reflect the new updated exchange rate. In CRM there is only one exchange rate – the current exchange rate and changing it will not updated previous past closed opportunities. Plan to have detailed discussions with the client regarding this topic is it may be OK to use the CRM methodology for multi-currency. In many of the cases in my own personal experience the Salesforce method of currency management gave the client much better control over reporting figures, particularly for multi-national companies who report in one base currency, and even to the point where commission is based on the value of the exchange rate. In this scenario I have written a multi-currency engine for CRM that allows different exchange rates for fiscal periods. This is a large piece of work so best avoided if possible!

 

So, they are my top 3 tips to help in a successful migration from Salesforce to CRM. There will be other complications along the way as you might expect with a switch in application, however these three topics I have found to be the most problematic.

If you do need assistance with your Salesforce migration, drop me an email (my email address is on my blog profile page).