Custom App + Salesforce: Fully Integrated to Grow Your Business

Have you found that off-the-shelf Salesforce products don’t meet your specific business needs? You’re not alone as many companies with complex processes, large teams to manage, or digital products and services with advanced flows often run into limitations with these off-the-shelf offerings.

In scenarios like this, LaunchPad Lab recommends one of two key solutions to fully integrate Salesforce products with proprietary applications to provide the best user experience possible. These solutions are Salesforce + Heroku Connect or Experience Cloud.

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Salesforce & Heroku Connect

Salesforce

Salesforce is the most robust off-the-shelf software platform in the world. With their “No Code” approach, Salesforce enables entire teams with accessible software solutions. 

However, simply relying 100% on Salesforce off-the-shelf products isn’t enough for most organizations as there are limitations within several areas. Most companies should leverage a mix of off-the-shelf products with proprietary applications in order to stay relevant and create functional and enjoyable user experiences.

Heroku

Heroku is one of our favorite platforms for proprietary software development and any organization seeking to improve its digital customer experience. Heroku is built on top of AWS, empowering developers to bring web and mobile apps to market 2x faster.

Dual Engine Architecture

If your organization is leveraging Salesforce for off-the-shelf solutions and Heroku for proprietary app development, Heroku Connect is your competitive advantage for real-time syncing and full integration. 

Heroku Connect, a cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), simplifies the deployment and scaling of web applications. When used with Salesforce, it creates the foundation for a powerful blend of business management and application development, resulting in sales, service, and marketing benefits. We call this the “dual-engine architecture” advantage. 

This is the most powerful way to fully customize and integrate your app so it syncs to your Salesforce org seamlessly. By leveraging Heroku and Heroku Connect, businesses can build fully custom applications that report directly back to the Salesforce CRM and pull data through with ease.

Key Benefits of Salesforce and Heroku Connect

The bi-directional, real-time syncing provided by Heroku Connect makes it seamless to move data between Salesforce and Heroku.

As your customers interact with your proprietary mobile or web app, the data will flow directly into Salesforce.

This Dual-Engine Architecture drives a number of beneficial outcomes:

• Faster time-to-market and iteration of proprietary software.
• Improved customer experiences, driving both retention and revenue.
• Increased employee productivity by automating manual work.
• Fewer data discrepancies and errors, thanks to real-time sync.
• Improved customer support with agents gaining a 360-degree view of the customer.
• Stronger security across both internal- and customer-facing technologies.
• Improved reporting and insights as business-driven and customer-driven data can be combined into a single Data Warehouse.

Experience Cloud

Experience Cloud is a Salesforce tool used for creating beautiful digital experiences—including websites and mobile applications—for customers, employees, and professional partners. 

The platform includes a mix of powerful, off-the-shelf components paired with a custom development framework. If you’re a business looking to go to market quickly, Experience Cloud can help reduce some of the time it takes an organization to build an application with entirely custom code.

We typically recommend Experience Cloud for building templated portals or web apps, such as account portals for clients or public knowledge databases. This could include support articles your company wants to share with the public, self-service FAQs, or internal hubs for employees to connect with your company.

Key Benefits of Experience Cloud

Speed
By using Experience Cloud, we can bring a product to market in as little as two weeks by leveraging standard Salesforce components. Plus, as a ready-to-go portal solution, you can integrate Experience Cloud directly with your Salesforce CRM.

Ideal for Several Common Use Cases
With Experience Cloud, choose from numerous Customer Portals or Help Center templates to start the process. From these off-the-shelf solutions, you can customize Experience Cloud to meet your organization’s needs.

Native Integration with Salesforce
By remaining in the Salesforce ecosystem, organizations with Experience Cloud have direct integration with Salesforce CRM. If your company uses Salesforce daily, using Experience Cloud is a seamless way to support your teams.

Easy Management
Whether you’re building a community portal or a digital training and knowledge hub, using Experience Cloud is seamless and easy to use. Your Salesforce admins can manage your community and deploy changes—all without an in-house development team.

Experience Cloud + Heroku: In the Wild

Flexco, a leader in automotive remarketing services, came to LaunchPad Lab in need of a digital product to power their daily business operations. From coordinating fleet management to navigating an online auction platform, Flexco needed a streamlined way to access and house large amounts of data.

LaunchPad Lab provided a specialized combination of Salesforce support and custom application development services. Our goal was to develop a new software workflow that would streamline overall operations for the administrative team, offer various services for clients, and provide an innovative vehicle purchase experience. 

To achieve this, we assisted Flexco in building their new digital products on Sales Cloud, Experience Cloud, and Heroku Connect. By leveraging Heroku as the foundation for Flexco’s digital ecosystem, we reduced their time-to-market and seamlessly integrated their systems to create a single source of truth within Salesforce.

Read the full case study here.

Your Custom App Integration Partner

As a Salesforce partner and custom app development agency, LaunchPad Lab helps our clients navigate the integration of Salesforce so they can get the most out of their technology. 

With our deep industry expertise in Salesforce development, LaunchPad Lab can help you choose the right technology to create a competitive advantage for your business. Schedule a free discovery session with us today to learn more!

Whitepaper

Building Your Competitive Advantage With Salesforce

Gain Insights and Best Practices for Salesforce Adoption and Optimization

Download Your Guide