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ERP integration with DynamicsCRM

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Hello,

We have an in-house ERP and we want to integrate it with Dynamics CRM.

We're evluating the options and we are in front of this challanges:

our ERP is built upon java stack (JavaEE, spring...)
200-300 users use it intensively each day: Managers, sales team, customers and providers
our ERP is reachable from wan and our users can use it anywhere while connected to internet.
We need to use Dynamics CRM to manage our sale. We're planning to insert our cutomers and products in Dynamics and track sales (quotes, orders, invoices) there.

We started designing our solution and we're actually in front of some issues:

When we add a product in our ERP,
1. should we add it only on dynamics, add reference it in our ERP. And whenever we need it, we should request it from Dynamics, or
2. should we create it in our ERP and manage it there. And when we need to analyse our sales, we sync our ERP database with CRM database
What's the common way to keep CRM up to date with our ERP?
1. in each operation in ERP, we need to perform an equivalent one with CRM at the same time (adding products, providers and customers, savng a sale...), or
2. we should plan a cron that will sync between ERP database and Dynamics CRM on a daily basis.

Many thanks for your help,

Best regards,

Slim

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Community Member on at

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Hi Slim,

the standard scenario is the following:

1) OWNERSHIP

If records exists yet in ERP, ERP is master for:

Accounts

Products

Price list

Invoices

CRM is master for:

Quotes

Orders

Lead

Contact

2) SYNCHRONIZATION

You could use a cronjob/scheduled task for all non-critical operations (account creation and catalogs from ERP to CRM, validated orders from CRM to ERP).

You should use real-time web services for critical operations (such as stock control, complex validation rules, etc.)

Hope it helps, feel free to ask more.

If you found the answer helpful, please mark as Verified

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Thank You & Best Regards

Francesco Picchi

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Consultant, Bologna, ITALY

Independent Contractor

http://www.francescopicchi.com

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Aric Levin - MVP 30,190 Moderator on at

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There are a couple of things that you should consider. The first thing of course is what data should be contained in what system, and when data will be synchronized between the different systems.

In general, you should see your CRM system as the Customer Management so that Account and Contact information are maintained in it. Since account information is also maintained in ERP, you should have that information synched.

If you have a need to see all the data in both systems, I would say there is your answer, you just have to decide which is Master for each type of record. Also consider what is easier to synchronize and maintain the security for.

For example, if you need to maintain the accounts are only created in ERP, it is very easy to add that to security in CRM, not sure regarding your custom ERP system.

Saying that, what do you use for synchronization? Our preferred tool for synching between SQL based systems and CRM is SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) with Kingswaysoft. There are other options available out there for that purpose as well. We run synchronization for our processes based on different schedules (some are daily, and some weekly), based on the requirements and how often changes occur in these types of records.

If your requirements are not urgent (from a time perspective), Dynamics 365 v9 contains a feature called Virtual Entities. The On-Premise release should be coming out "probably" some time soon in the next few months, and that will allow you to connect to external sources without the need to perform all of this synchronization, but have the ability to display the data in CRM that is contained in other systems.

Hope this helps.

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Hi Francesco, Aric,

Many thanks for your answers.

@Francesco, we're on the same track. I think that CRM shouldn't be requested for each ERP operation/navigation i.e displaying a product, because it will slow our request: erp request its database to retrieve product CRM id then request crm using wcf web services (implemented using Dynamics SDK) to retrieve product values and finally display the product in ERP.

Thanks for the stock flag :)

@Aric, thanks for the security heads up, we will study this in deep. For synchronization, we're planning to implement our in-house synchronization middleware based on wcf web services implemented using the Dynamics SDK. Don't worry, Dynamics is in a DMZ only available for our ERP :). Any comment about our Solution?

Thanks again for the synchronization services and the information about v9. It's attractive but I'm not the decision maker (a month is just too far for us :) ). I will forward the information.

Any other suggestion from the community :) ?

Best regards,

Slim

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