Integration Of Salesforce With Tableau For Powerful Data Visualization

Do you need help with Salesforce’s in-built reporting and dashboard limitations? Do you have to apply more effort to create advanced visualizations to see trends, user patterns, and peculiarities in your customer data? 

Consider the possibilities of combining your Salesforce data and information from other sources (third-party data) in one place, such as financial systems or marketing tools. This could provide a more comprehensive understanding of your customers and their behaviors. 

Here, Tableau can help you with a comprehensive picture by unifying data from Salesforce with external sources. Resultantly, you will learn about the impact of marketing campaigns on sales, help identify trends in customer churn, etc. 

But how can you integrate Salesforce with Tableau? 

This blog post will showcase the benefits you can get from integrating Salesforce with Tableau, best practices to follow, steps to integrate, and more. 

By the end of this write-up, we can ensure you will have all the relevant information you need to integrate Tableau with Salesforce. 

Let’s get the ball rolling!

What Is Salesforce?

Image Source: salesforceben

Salesforce and Tableau are the peas in a pod. Both are cloud-based software solutions but are chosen for different purposes. 

Let’s get deeper to know about both separately. 

Salesforce

• It is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.
• Crafted to facilitate businesses handle every aspect of customer interactions, like marketing, sales, support, and customer service. 
• Imagine it as a central hub storing customer data, such as customer details, support tickets, purchase history, etc. 
• Salesforce arrives with valuable features, like opportunity management, tracking, and reporting, as well as dashboards that lend a hand to businesses to brush up their sales pipeline, offer better customer service, and close more deals. 

Now that you know what Salesforce is, we will comprehend what Tableau is. 

What Is Tableau?

Image Source: Tableau

Per the definition, Tableau is a visual analytics platform that transforms how we utilize data to resolve issues. 

• Also known as data visualization software. 
• Let businesses witness and understand their data through engaging dashboards and visualizations, such as graphs, charts, and maps. 
• Tableau facilitates users’ connecting with varied data sources, including Salesforce, performing data analysis, and unveiling hidden trends and insights. 
• However, Tableau doesn’t directly manage customer interactions. Instead, its visualizations can contribute to understanding customer patterns and making data-driven decisions. 

How Can Tableau Users Get Benefit from Salesforce Integration?

As discussed above, you should integrate Salesforce to get comprehensive, actionable insights into any kind of data (organize and unify data from Salesforce and other external data sources). 

You can get the best of both worlds by integrating Tableau with Salesforce and making data-driven decisions. 

Besides, we have uncovered below varied uncommon benefits of integrating Salesforce and Tableau. 

Let’s have a glimpse!

1. Seamless Data Integration

You can avoid copying and pasting data between Salesforce and Tableau platforms. By integrating these solutions, you can witness seamless data flow between them, saving time and diminishing errors. 

2. Enhanced Data Analysis

Salesforce holds the power to give a unified view of data accumulating from varied sources and Salesforce apps. On the other hand, Tableau helps people and organizations become more data-driven. 

By representing figures in clear graphs and charts, Tableau allows users to compare data sets, spot trends, and reveal hidden insights into customer details. 

3. Accelerate Data-Driven Decisions

Now, you don’t need to wait for hours to get reports. With Tableau, you get real-time data at your reach, making the best use of which you can quickly make informed decisions. 

Imagine you witness a sales fall. Integrating Salesforce with Tableau, you can take instant action or address a hot product and capitalize on its demand. 

4. Optimize Business Processes

Scan how your business parts, like sales, customer service, and marketing, perform together. With Tableau, you can pinpoint the hurdles, streamline business workflows, and enhance efficiency. 

5. Personalize Customer Experiences

Integrate Tableau and Salesforce to understand your customers better. This fusion analyzes purchase patterns and preferences, allowing users to personalize marketing campaigns and product recommendations and offer unique customer service. 

6. Enhance Data Security

Connecting Salesforce to Tableau enhances data security, but not directly. Salesforce leverages encryption, access controls, and audit trails to protect customer data, while Tableau provides data source security, user permissions, and row-level security to regulate access to visualizations.

7. Get a Unified View of Business Performance

Now you can view your data freed from the boundaries of silos. Tableau provides a clear picture of all your data on Salesforce and lets you know your business performance. You can also track sales objectives, identify any room for improvement, and monitor customer satisfaction. 

Tip*: You can ensure maximum security with the integration; it’s essential to configure access controls within both platforms accurately. This way, only authorized users can get access to sensitive customer data. 

How To Integrate Salesforce With Tableau?

Image Source: Tableau

Connecting Tableau with Salesforce, you can create powerful visualizations and reports using data from Salesforce, which is the best way to get more of your analytics. 

Essential Prerequisites

• Working knowledge of Salesforce and Tableau.
• Keep Tableau installed (ready) at the host workstation.
• A Salesforce account. 

Steps To Integrate: 

• Login into the Tableau Cloud account
• On the Tableau Cloud homepage > Click the New button > Select Published Data Source.
• On the Connect to Data pane (that opens) > switch to the Connectors tab
• Select Salesforce.
• A new browser window will appear, asking for your Salesforce account credentials.
• Enter your credentials and Click Login. 
• Click Allow, and a pop-up will appear asking to allow access to Salesforce.
• Drag and drop Salesforce tables (per your requirements) onto the Tableau worksheet (to create visualizations and reports). 
• Go to the Worksheet (from the bottom left), and start building your first visualization. 
• You can showcase the data in whichever format you want using the recommended visualization. 

Pro tip: Speed up your reporting and analysis using Tableau Prep to clean and restructure your Salesforce data before you visualize it in Tableau. 

Note: Don’t confuse Salesforce and Tableau integration with Salesforce Data Cloud and Tableau integration. 

The former is ideal for users looking to access particular Salesforce data. In contrast, the latter is suitable for users who want to access customer data with data from other sources and gain real-time insights. 

Best Practices To Follow For Salesforce Integration With Tableau

Integrating Salesforce and Tableau enables a seamless, secure, and efficient data analysis experience. 

You can attain this by following best practices. Not to fret, we have showcased the crucial practices you should consider:

1. Develop Clear Guidelines

You should establish data governance to ensure data quality, compliance, and security within your company. Also, standardized rules and formats for data validation must be defined, and encryption protocols and access controls must be implemented to protect sensitive information. 

2. Perform Predictive Analysis

Integrating predictive models into Tableau will let you anticipate trends or address sales opportunities. With this platform, you can craft interactive dashboards and input new data, based on which you will get real-time update predictions. 

3. Improve Data Literacy

You can make data learning enjoyable by training users at your organization about data accumulation, analysis, and visualization. Motivate question-answer sessions to foster an analytical mindset worldwide. 

4. Real-Time Visualization

Build real-time connections with Salesforce Data Cloud and Tableau to get live data updates. Merge real-time data from Salesforce and information from other external sources to enable a complete analysis. This way, you can automate the upgradation of data to ensure up-to-date insights. 

5. Customize Data Mapping

Perform data mapping to meet your unique business objectives. Determine the crucial data sources and attributes for fulfilling these goals. 

For example, while aiming at customer segmentation, you should focus on mapping data relevant to customer behaviors and demographics. 

Common Pain Points of Integrating Salesforce and Tableau

There are also some bad with every good, and the same applies here. 

We discussed the benefits of connecting Tableau with Salesforce; you might be expecting a seamless route to this integration. But you need to stop and think about the challenges that can block your pathway. 

We have mentioned some pain points and potential solutions; you can consider them. 

Data Freshness: Salesforce holds real-time data, but only sometimes. So, you must refresh data frequently to ensure its freshness stays intact. 

Formula Limitations: Tableau lags in interpreting Salesforce formula fields. You may have to recreate complicated formulas within Tableau as evaluated fields, which can be error-prone and time-consuming. 

Join Complexity: Connecting various Salesforce projects with complex joins in Tableau can be cumbersome. The tables that are linked effectively may restrict the extractions. 

You may find it clunky to confront these. You should choose a reliable company offering customized Salesforce integration services. 

Why Choose EmizenTech To Integrate Salesforce With Tableau?

Are you looking to hire a Salesforce consulting company? You should go for EmizenTech. Why? 

Being a leading Salesforce consulting company, EmizenTech provides services ahead of Salesforce and Tableau integration. 

The team of expert Salesforce consultants at EmizenTech helps with implementation, data migration, integration, customization, development, etc., offering comprehensive solutions for all your data analysis requirements. 

Key Highlights of Hiring Emizentech 

• Focus on a data-centric approach.
• A team of experienced experts
• Proven track record
• Proficiency in varied Salesforce clouds (Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud) 
• Customization mastery
• Ongoing support

Contact a Salesforce consultant with your customized business objectives and get a seamless pathway to attain them. 

Conclusion

By fusing the power of Salesforce with Tableau’s advanced analytics, you can deeply understand your customers and business. Because of this, you can make better decisions, enhance your customer relationships, and boost revenue. 

What are you waiting for? Make Salesforce and Tableau integration smooth by hiring a Salesforce consulting company with a proven track record. 

The experts at EmizenTech will serve you the best with a smooth integration process without any errors, limitations, complexity, etc.

Frequently Asked Questions