Salesforce + Heroku: The Dual Engine Architecture for Digital Transformation

Staying ahead of customer expectations and technological advancements presents a continuous challenge. Business leaders are finding that the traditional approaches are no longer enough. The key issue? Integrating and optimizing digital platforms to enhance both customer engagement and internal efficiencies. Addressing this dilemma requires a strategic transformation.

When an organization invests in digital excellence or implements a digital transformation, it typically does so by leveraging two types of digital technology:

Off-the-shelf software, which often serves internal operations
Proprietary software, designed primarily for customer engagement

In today’s digital landscape, a company must harness both types of software to craft meaningful and efficient experiences for both customers and team members. Companies must deliver compelling customer experiences (e.g., websites, apps, portals) while enabling their internal teams to efficiently manage customer relationships and business operations with technology solutions like CRM, Service, and Marketing Automation.

Synchronization Challenges

Achieving seamless integration between off-the-shelf and proprietary software is a common ambition. For instance, when a customer interacts with a custom mobile app, ideally, this interaction’s data would flow directly into a CRM, providing a complete view of the customer to the service agent.

However, this integration often remains a “dream state” due to the complexity and cost of data integrations.

Dual Engines

Salesforce has developed a solution where the needs for both standard and proprietary software are met with top-tier options. Owning both technologies, Salesforce has introduced a bi-directional, real-time syncing engine through Heroku Connect. This facilitates the flow of data between the custom database and Salesforce seamlessly, meaning any customer data updates in a proprietary app are immediately reflected in Salesforce.

Salesforce: The Off-the-Shelf Technology Powerhouse

Salesforce stands as a leading off-the-shelf software platform, offering a “No Code” environment that empowers everyone in an organization to develop applications, not just the engineers.

The Salesforce ecosystem is vast, encompassing core products like CRM, Ticketing, Chat, Marketing Automation, e-commerce, and AI. The AppExchange marketplace extends this offering with thousands of additional products to meet a wide array of business needs.

Heroku: The Premier Platform for Proprietary Software Development

For businesses aiming to boost their digital customer experience, Heroku is the preferred platform. Operating on AWS infrastructure, Heroku simplifies the development process, allowing for two times faster deployment of web and mobile applications.

Heroku’s extensive collection of Add-Ons and its infrastructure abstraction enable developers to focus more on creating and refining essential web and mobile experiences rather than on server management.

Heroku Connect

Heroku Connect’s bi-directional, real-time syncing simplifies data movement between Salesforce and Heroku. This ensures data from customer interactions on proprietary apps is integrated seamlessly into Salesforce, enabling the development of powerful internal applications and administrative data management in Salesforce, with updates reaching customers in near real-time.

Outcomes

The “Dual Engine” architecture leveraging Salesforce and Heroku yields significant business benefits, including:

Accelerated Time-to-Market and Maintenance for Custom Software
Enhanced Customer Experiences, Driving Retention and Revenue
Greater Employee Productivity by Automating Tasks
Reduced Data Discrepancies/Errors
Improved Customer Support With 360-degree Customer View
Strengthened Security
More Insightful Reporting With a Single Data Warehouse

If you’re looking to advance your digital transformation journey, LaunchPad Lab is here to assist. Our team is ready to assess your current technology setup, infrastructure, and customer experience, offering strategies for success. Get in touch to discover how we can help your business grow.

Ryan Francis

Partner, President, & Head of Sales

As ambitious as he is tall, Ryan has a passion for creation. In 2012, he created Francis Lofts & Bunks, a company in Western Ohio that manufactures aluminum loft beds and bunk beds. Equipped with a burning desire to build things that are useful to others, Ryan has come into his own in web development, combining creativity, logic, and an empathy for others to help clients launch outstanding, easy-to-use products.