Accounts Payable Automation with DBSync

Why AP Automation?

This is one of the common questions that we come across if a company should invest in automating their Accounts Payable process. Well, the answer is, many companies out there do this!

Let’s face the fact that many companies do face a lot of challenges handling this part of the business and list out a few significant problems

·         Poor data entry – With many departments involved during the procurement of materials, the data is provided through unstructured data like emails, documents, OCR, RPA, etc. How to keep track of all these without any human error intervention?

·         Approval process – With different levels of approval needed during procurement, people often have to wait for a timely response to process the requests. This is a significant roadblock of mid-sized companies stretching their wings wide.

·         Storage – When most of the organizations running on “Cloud” these days and organizations with non-digitized systems, storing the documents and retrieving them is a challenge.

·         Handling Fraudulent Remittance– Even with all restrictions and compliances in place, there are organizations that still face issues with paying the suppliers before the receipt of materials on double payments. In the healthcare domain, there are organizations working with receiving paper invoices due to HIPAA compliance where they can step into different digitized methods of addressing this issue.

·         Time & Cost – Looking at the above significant challenges the primary concern for any organization would be on time and cost. How much time is spent to address these issues and investment does an organization have to continue with their current business model?

This is where Automating your Accounts Payable with different online tools, and available integration platforms help to ease running a business 

·         Start planning and research on what are the online tools that are available which can help you address the issues that as an organization that you are facing. Taking advantage of having specific applications to manage and utilize efficiently is the first step to resolve your problems.

·         Having an xRM (This is an extension of CRM like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365, which are very configurable and metadata driven setup) in the house would help a business to segment many parts of the company. An xRM solution to a business not only manages Customers but also track everyone doing business with you. Building a customized CRM or having a platform which addresses these would help organizations to have data entry at one point and maintain all their records at one single system
I do understand just having an xRM / CRM wouldn’t resolve how you can automate AP, but that’s a start for any organization who is looking to roll-on for the first time.

·         Organizations would sure have an ERP or an Accounting tool to manage their financial data. Taking off some load on what accounting does is an excellent step to get things on track in saving a lot of time and cost.

·         They are using online applications to tackle warehouse, shipping and packaging, a delivery confirmation. Etc is part of any organizations now that are looking to streamline their business. Using specific applications to manage different segments of the system will ease the business and help to track the progress easily within an organization.

·         For Healthcare sectors, adhering to multiple compliances would be a challenge and using different digitized way to transfer data outside of the organization can be done over emails, secure FTPs, secure ways to payout can be addressed.

Well, talking all of above on how can one automate AP and multiple business segments. That’s why an organization would need a solution provider to help you integrate and have all these data manage across different platforms. Automating AP would ease business in generating vendor bill’s, maintaining the item receipts, tracking shipments, managing inventory, automating payments, etc. without much human intervention and human error.

Auto scheduling of payments, send out reminders, getting the best of the systems to manage approvals are at ease automating your largest business sector. All these can be done when you look out for different applications that are handling these exclusive tasks for you. 

These would ensure your accounting is not involved in every step of the process. As the data can be shared across multiple systems, accounting would never be a bottleneck for any of your queries. And to make sure this happens, integrating your data with the platform can ensure you are in the right direction.

There are many surveys conducted helping us to understand that close to 35% to 40% of time and cost is reduced having AP automation.

With Data accessibility you can generate all kinds of reports and dashboards to be on top of your business and making use of different BI tools to understand how things are working out for you at different segments. 

Integration tools out in the market help you connect different applications and all data available across the multiple systems. One can question why should someone choose so many applications and have an integration setup between them. Well, my answer to them will be “ how easy is it to live in a four-wall room when you are piling up.”

Integration platforms can make sure you don’t go through the hassle of maintaining data with multiple entries in different applications. There can be real-time integration to make data more available across the organization.

You can get many integration platforms but DBSync being in the elite club of iPaaS space proving integration solutions connectin a variety of on-premise or cloud applications is subscribed and recommended for automating Accounts Payable. With many templates explicitly built to integrate different applications that I have mentioned above, they can offer a solution to the problem of an organization. Having a platform which can be leveraged to solve multiple issues of an organization can be fulfilled through integration, and I firmly believe these folks can do it.

What is CRON and how it can greatly help you schedule Cloud Workflow jobs

Introduction

Cloud Workflow presents a scheduler that allows automating the execution of a task over time. The corresponding schedule can be defined via a menu, where the user selects the necessary time expression or via a CRON expression.

This article explains what a CRON expression is, and how to create a valid one for Cloud Workflow.

What is CRON

CRON is a time-based software utility, usually available in Unix-like machines, which can be used to schedule the execution of computer tasks.

According to Wikipedia, the origin of the name cron is from the Greek word for time, χρόνος (Chronos).

The Unix version of CRON uses a file named crontab, where all automated tasks are listed, accompanied by a time tag, which defines the execution rule.

Advantages of using a CRON expression

Although not always so evident, CRON expressions can be beneficial when defining repetitive tasks. The syntax is straightforward and gives the user a good command over the automation of tasks.  

Even easier, the Cloud Workflow’s Scheduler uses only the time section of a CRON expression.

How to add a CRON expression in Cloud Workflow

Adding a CRON expression in Cloud Workflow is straightforward. From the Repeat menu present in the Scheduler, select CRON and then add your CRON expression in the CRON Expression text box.

CRON expressions

The diagram below summarizes the time section of a CRON expression.

Source: Wikipedia

As the reader can see, the time section of a CRON expression consists of five fields, representing minutes, hours, day of the month, month, and day of the week, in that order.

The possible values for each field are defined in the figure above — a star or asterisk (*) represents all possible values.

Some examples of the time section of a CRON expression are:

1 0 * * *

With indicates the first minute, of the first hour, of every day, of every month, of every day of the week.

1 0 1 * *

The above expression has added 1 to the day of the month field. Thus, it indicates the first minute, of the first hour, of the very first day of each month.

1 0 1 1 *

The above expression has added 1 to the month field. Thus, it indicates the 1^st minute, of the first hour, of the 1^st of January.

1 0 1 1 6

The above expression has added 6 to the day of the week field. Thus, it indicates the 1^st minute, of the first hour, of the 1^st of January, which must be Saturday.

It should be noticed that the Scheduler accepts standard CRON expressions. Non-standard CRON commands, such as @yearly, are not considered.

To learn more, please visit our site - DBSync

DBSync Replication tool: Key functions

A brief explanation of its functionalities and uses

Replication is about identifying changes and updating other data sources. Its applications are many. From data warehousing to business intelligence and compliance.

Our replication tool has many useful functionalities that can help you achieve those goals based on your business strategies. Thus, a good understanding of their scopes and differences is vital to obtain the maximum benefit from the tool.

In this article, you will learn why replication is essential by analyzing several possible use scenarios. Following this, you will understand the main features of the software and their differences, and the different ways you can run the tool.

So, let’s start by understanding where replication has a place in your business.

Why is replication important?

Replication is an integral part of your daily business tasks because by identifying changes, it keeps your data up to date in all data sets. This can be easily seen in the several potential use cases of our DBSync Replication tool.  These possible uses are:

• Staging a database for data warehousing: our replication tool can be used to create the schema for a data warehouse. Also, once the warehouse structure has been defined, our tool can be used to populate it.
• Create datasets for business intelligence and reporting: business intelligence and reporting need specialized data. Our tool helps you to create tailored datasets, which can be used as a data feed for specialized applications and reports
• Create backups and archives: backups and archives are part of the life of the DBA. Our tool helps your business by automating many of the functions, thus, freeing the DBA’s time to do more valuable tasks. Archives are also an essential part of regulatory compliance. Automating data archiving according to your business characteristics is one of the best ways to ensure compliance.
• Integrate Salesforce with in-house applications: Salesforce is a powerful application. However, when working in combination with other apps, it is even more powerful. DBSync replication tool can create the necessary data sets that feed those apps. Even more, once the data has been copied into a database, it can be combined with data from other sources, massaged and then, incorporated back into Salesforce.
• Create a data set for in-house application development: app development needs data for many of its phases, such as testing. By using our tool, your developers can create tailored and updated data sets, with the added advantage that your production data remains untouched.

Having seen some examples that explain why replication is a must in your business, let’s see the main characteristics of the DBSync Replication tool, which define its applicability in your industry.

What are the main characteristics of the DBSync Replication tool?

The DBSync Replication tool has several outstanding technical aspects that define its scope and applicability. The most important ones are:

• Auto-creation of new fields: when a new field is added to the Salesforce schema, it is automatically incorporated in the database structure. This ensures that your structure remains updated in your backups and other data sets, and by being automated, frees the task from the DBA list of “to do.”
• Downloading of objects/tables into a database: our tool allows you to download Salesforce objects/tables into a database of your choice.
• Uploading of data from a local database to Salesforce: you can upload data from a local database to Salesforce.
• Incremental updates: our tool automatically tracks any data changes. Thus, you never miss any changes done, thereby, reducing the number of errors and freeing up the time of your DBA for other more important tasks.
• Migration of non-replicable objects: non-replicable objects are those entities whose changes cannot be tracked over time. Examples in Salesforce are LeadShare, AccountShare, and OpportunityShare. DBSync replication tool migrates them by copying the complete objects. This option is available in the Database Details section of the program.
• Real-time integration using outbound messages: by using Salesforce’s outbound messaging capability, our integration tool helps you to have practically real-time integration.

Having understood the main technical aspects of our tool, let’s learn the main ways in which you can to use it.

How can I use the DBSync Replication tool?

Using the DBSync replication tool is straightforward. The system guides you step by step. First, you need to define your source and destination information. For example, you will have to input the credentials for your database and Salesforce.

Once your source and destination information are complete, you can run the replication tool. There are six-run options available, which are:

• Clean copy: a Clean Copy is a copy of all the data available in a Salesforce instance. In other words, it copies all existing records in Salesforce to a database of your choice. The clean copy can be scheduled via the Scheduler, and thus, used as a backup tool.
• Update schema: updates only the schema or structure of a database. Thus, it copies the tables and their columns with their respective names existing in the source database to the destination database. No data is copied from the source to the destination. Update schema comes in handy when we want to create a new instance of a database.
• Source to DB (database): provides an incremental backup. In other words, it copies the records that are in the source (for example, Salesforce), but don’t exist in the database, and updates the database with those records that have been changed in Salesforce. This option can be used as a complement of the Clean Copy option, in a backup tool. For example, a backup strategy could be a clean copy scheduled every Friday night, and incremental backups scheduled daily.
• DB (database) to Source: this option is similar to the previous one but in a reversed flow. In other words, in the source (for example, Salesforce), it creates the records that exit in the database but not in the source, and updates those that have been changed in the database, but not in the source.
• Snapshot: a snapshot is a copy of the whole Salesforce database, which can be restored. Its name includes a time reference. Thus, snapshots become very useful for legal compliance or proof in case of litigation, as each of them is a copy of the data contained in Salesforce, at a point in time.
• Export: allows the user to connect two different instances of Salesforce. In other words, to transfer data from a Salesforce instance to another separate Salesforce instance. This option is useful when you need to create a new Salesforce instance based on another one.

Summarizing

In this article, you have seen why replication is vital to your business and the main characteristics of our DBSync Replication tool. With the growth of data that characterizes our present times and the need for up to date information, the use of replication continues to grow, as it does the number of applications of our tool.

Ready to learn more? Go to our page and try our software, or contact one of our representatives. We are there to serve you and make your business grow.

Force of a Godzilla – Salesforce and JIRA

The name “JIRA” is inherited from the Japanese word “Gojira” which means “Godzilla.” When you combine it with Salesforce, you get “The Force of a Godzilla”!

Ideal CRM and Helpdesk Setup

We all are aware that Salesforce is world’s #1 CRM used across industries for managing customer data and is widely used by various departments like marketing, sales, project management, accounting, operations, support, and services. It instantly streamlines and automates your business processes bringing in incredible simplicity, efficiency, visibility and integration and proves to be a support to achieve higher customer satisfaction without any infrastructure to buy, setup or manage. That is the beauty of this cloud-based CRM application.

As mentioned above, Salesforce can manage the entire sales cycle, right from account creation by injecting leads into the system, creating relevant opportunities, to timely reminders for follow up and eventually closing the deal. With the ability to stage each of these milestones as a prospect, proposal, invoicing, won or lost, it can be easily customized as per your sales process requirements. In order to yield maximum benefits and become more efficient in handling data, Salesforce has integration capabilities with other systems like database, ERP, accounting, warehouse management, chat, LMS, helpdesk and more, which proves to be ideal for any organization in automating the IT ecosystem saving vast number of resource hours and investment.

Similarly, a well-known system called JIRA, mainly used by organizations for issue tracking, bug tracking, and agile project management, apart from its main functionalities, offers integration options with other major systems used by organizations to share and manage data efficiently.

In a typical customer service environment, it is vital to have a ticketing system in place, to log, track and resolve client issues. It enables organizations to understand their clients better, know the problem areas, and take the product or services in the right direction. JIRA Service Desk proves to be the ultimate resolution where incoming client requests are accepted and converted into a case, which is then assigned to a resource to work on.

The biggest reason why companies opt for JIRA with Salesforce is that they can work well hand in hand, where Salesforce is used for client management and JIRA for case management and project tracking. This proves to be a powerful combination for any organization which requires a straight and sorted issue tracking process to work, in association with a CRM that holds all client records. We can say that the Japanese correctly named JIRA after the name “GOJIRA’ which means Godzilla which when combined with Salesforce, becomes “The force of a Godzilla.”

Now that’s a POWERHOUSE! 

Well, after reading this, a fundamental question might have popped in our minds –

How do we know that our organization needs integration between Salesforce and JIRA? What are the factors to consider even to conclude that we should have an integration in place?

Here are some indicators:

1. You have a resource dedicated to ticket creation, resource alignment, prioritization, and SLA follow up and you are dependent on him to initiate the process
2. You have people entering the same data manually in Salesforce and JIRA
3. Your resources are spending more time entering data than doing the actual job
4. You have duplicate records or bad data
5. Your SLAs are not met for issue resolution
6. Low resource efficiency
7. You witness data mismatch in project, issues or bug tracking which is creating confusion between teams/resources
8. You are losing clients due to delayed, incorrect or unresolved issues logged
9. Inaccurate data analysis and forecast due to incorrect or varying data  

JIRA is well integrated with Atlassian suites like Confluence etc., which makes self-service and other knowledge article databases seamless.

Now that we know we need integration in place between the two systems, what should we look for in integration to best serve our organization?

1. Connector with prebuilt templates
2. Correct and seamless field mapping
3. Fully compatible with your Salesforce and JIRA versions
4. Auto-sync functionality with as low as 3 minutes or even real-time
5. Ability to make the integration bi-directional
6. Provides error logs and notifications
7. Ability to connect cloud to cloud or cloud to on-premise applications
8. A simple interface and ability to add new connectors in no time
9. Cost effective, i.e. higher ROI

Accurate field mapping is one of the most critical functionalities an integration tool should offer you. Let’s look at standard field mappings provided by DBSync which are ideal and are preferred by most of the organizations using Salesforce and JIRA.

Salesforces and JIRA Service Desk – JIRA Service Desk Issues to Salesforce Cases

JIRA Service Desk & Salesforce unidirectional standard template helps you integrate data between JIRA Service Desk and Salesforce. It enables you to streamline your data, automate business processes and ensure data accuracy between JIRA Service Desk and Salesforce to eliminate redundancy of data entry. 

With DBSync integration, you can construct custom mappings for this template. DBSync fully supports the creation of custom mappings as per your business model and business process.

This template supports almost all major versions of Salesforce: Salesforce Unlimited Edition, Salesforce Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition, and the Non-Profit Edition.

It supports JIRA Service Desk, JIRA Core and Service Desk Cloud or On-premise versions 

Salesforce and JIRA Core – Jira Core Issues to Salesforce Cases

The template is easy to integrate JIRA Core projects and Salesforce Cases. It provides Bidirectional integration capabilities with pre-built field to field mappings along with flexibility for more complex and dynamic mapping options.

This template supports JIRA Software 7.3.1 and above

Conclusion

Integrating the two systems, Salesforce and JIRA offers complete transparency in communication and supports cross – teamwork, making it more effective and productive. With the help of DBSync integration platform, it becomes easier for organizations to manage and track issues on both the systems with high levels of accuracy leading to higher customer satisfaction and organizational improvement.

DBSync standard solution and dynamic platform can help you integrate Salesforce and JIRA Service Desk almost in real time. In case of any specific needs, it can offer you a tailor-made solution just by leveraging the DBSync iPaaS and JIRA set of connectors. Please reach out to sales@mydbsync.com or call 1-877-739-2818 to get more information. Alternatively, reach out to your Account Manager if you already are a DBSync user. 

5 reasons why customers should have Data Integration

1. Take advantage of specialized applications

If I can say in my words, every piece of software that works with data represents analyses and transforms information in a specialized way. By integrating data into a format accepted by that application, you’re giving yourself the power to open and use your data in that software.

For Example, In DBSync we are using different types of connectors like Salesforce, Microsoft CRM Dynamics, NetSuite (ERP), QuickBooks and many more.

With the help of these connectors, we are Integrating the data from different sources to different destination platforms.

2. Reduce technical complexity and improve business agility

In present time Data Integration architecture enables organizations to eliminate point to point Integration, Reduce Complexity and improve overall optimization while providing self-service access for distributed teams.

3. Make Data More Available

Centralizing your data makes it easy for anyone at your company (or outside of your company, depending on your goals) to retrieve, inspect, and analyze it.

Easily accessible data means easily transformed data. People will be more likely to integrate the data into their projects, share the results, and keep the data up to date.

4. Managing CRM Applications

Customer data integration is essential for the success of CRM. You need to have accurate customer details (the single version of the truth). This is important so that all the customer service employees (from those who call the customer to those who process the application) have a clear view of the customer and see the same data. Organizations are mainly utilizing customer data integration for customer retention by having a 360-degree view of them. Their next step would be using customer data integration to get new customers.

5. Data Integrity

According to me many things will happen with your data from the day it is created in your system and throughout its lifecycle. It can be transferred to other systems, altered and updated multiple times. Human interactions, data transfers, viruses or compromised hardware are all events that can compromise your data’s integrity. This is where maintaining data integrity can become a tricky task.

In my job providing data integration solutions to organizations, data quality, and data integrity are always something we discuss in details. I believe that data integrity should be top of your mind at every stage of the data lifecycle, and already from the design and implementation phase of your systems. Data integrity also ensures recoverability and searchability, traceability and connectivity. Protecting the validity and accuracy of data also increases the stability and performance of your systems.

Reasons why to go for DBSync

DBSync is a proven integration platform which facilitates integration between various legacy systems, services, processes, business partners and data to provide new business value and improve new business performance. DBSync manages all communication, data translation, and process interaction among various connected applications. If I talk about the pricing, we have an excellent plan for our clients, and they can also choose the best package what they like based on their needs and requirements. Please check all the prices with all subscription plans at DBSync.

Best in class support and service plans

We are providing videos to the customers to help them in Implementation, to training documentation that explains, to a community platform, to one-on-one support from partners who can speed up your integration.

DBSync ensures you have everything required to implement and run your integration project deployment successfully.

Providing standard support through email or online are included as a part of the yearly subscription. Check out more.

Easily Customizable Integration by using iPaaS

The DBSync iPaas is the fastest way to integrate between two applications with its existing pre-defined solutions. It allows companies to connect “Cloud to Cloud” or “Cloud to On-Premise” applications quickly to solve any integration problem. You can also use it to streamline various known business processes like an order to cash, procure to pay, service to cash, payment integration or integrate your cloud applications with your database.

DBSync provides Development studio that would jump start your cloud adoption with pre-built templates and easily customizable integrations, API’s and extend the platform so that any non-technical users can quickly build processes that connect with an unlimited number of Endpoints. Check out more.

Support Standard and Custom Connectors for Integration

Connectors or adapter which are sometimes referred to from an integration standpoint as a set of components within the iPaas are that opens a connection to an external system that is used to authenticate, push and pull data from external systems.
Connectors in DBSync may be categorized into two types

• Standard Connectors

The standard connector presents a published, constant Interface (API) to users and other components on the upstream side of the connector. Please check the below link to see how many standard connectors we are supporting.

• Custom Connectors

DBSync provides SDK for building custom connectors. Most of the times we are getting requirements from the customers to create the custom connectors for them to transfer/ Integrate a Data from One application to another application like Salesforce to QuickBooks and many more. Check out more.

Tutorials

The tutorial is a method of transferring knowledge and may be used as a part of a learning process. DBSync tutorials are used for knowledge transfer.
Most of the time customers are using different tools for Data Integrations, but they don’t know how to use these tools for data integration. So, here DBSync is providing a Tutorial section for the users so users can come and see how they will be going to Integrate their data with the help of DBSync from Source to Destination applications like Salesforce to QuickBooks and many more. Tutorials provide all the information to the user about the queries builder and hierarchy mapping for the data flow. Check out more.

Template Library

Solution Library is a collection of pre-built integration solutions. These solutions can be easily added to your integration instance.

It helps the customers to get all the data about how to Integrate from source to target applications. With the help of Template Library customers will get to know about the information of Data Flow, Field Mapping, Process Map, Prerequisites for Integration and how the user will get to start with DBSync includes all the sequential points. Check out more.