Jonas Software Saves 5 Days of Data Entry per Month Using SmartConnect for Dynamics GP & Salesforce Integration
Jonas Software Background
Constellation Software is the world’s leading acquirer of vertical market software companies, having completed more acquisitions in the past five years than any other company in its industry. Mike Korbel is a portfolio manager for Jonas Software, a subsidiary of Constellation. Korbel has been with Jonas Software since 2010. “We are unique in that we run our acquisitions as individual entities and brands, grouped in operating groups, regional divisions, and portfolios – So, out of the 1,000 companies within Constellation, I work for Jonas Software,” Korbel said.
Korbel’s job consists of consolidating admin, finance, mergers and acquisitions, human resources, and contracts across his portfolio. “I don’t run any of the companies – they each have their CEOs, but I manage them to ensure they’re getting the best practice, and I handle all their reporting, so they can pursue sales, develop great products, and provide outstanding customer service,” he said.
Korbel’s group is slight, comprising about 75 people across seven companies, and they use Salesforce for most of their operations, including marketing, leads, sales, delivery, billing, and collections. They also use Microsoft Dynamics GP as their accounting system.
The (eOne) team was great,” Korbel said. “They were great at understanding what data was missing and figuring out where to get it from.
Mike Korbel, Portfolio Manager at Jonas Software
Challenges
Korbel’s challenge came down to communication and resolving duplicate data entry – he needed Salesforce and Dynamics GP to talk to one another.
His team was spending a ton of time duplicating work from Dynamics GP in Salesforce, including invoices, re-applying deferrals, and aligning data from one system to another. Additionally, all of Jonas Software’s credit card and payment systems are linked in Salesforce, including customers on automated billing. [We] needed to provide that data in close-to-real-time in Great Plains (Dynamics GP) – that was the challenge.” Korbel said.
To complicate matters, Korbel’s team had limited access to what they could do within Dynamics GP. “For a while, we used to export all of our usage data out of our CRM, and somebody would use that to make invoices and invoice customers out of Great Plains,” he said. “But then there would be disconnects, and honestly, delays.”
Jonas Software aimed to address their biggest headaches: invoicing and the extensive manual work it required. Previously, the team created invoices in Microsoft Excel and then imported them into Dynamics GP. They also attempted to replicate this process to integrate the invoices into Salesforce.
“That was creating a lot of work for the team,” Korbel said. “The time and resources to manage all that took us away from doing all things we wanted to do.”
The Solution – SmartConnect
Korbel was already familiar with eOne and SmartConnect when he began to explore his options for Jonas Software’s integration project, as it had come recommended from other companies within Constellation Software.
After getting in contact with eOne and learning more about SmartConnect, Korbel and Jonas Software selected SmartConnect for their project. “Based on what our needs were, we wanted to control everything in Salesforce as well as make sure we met our CFO’s needs and the needs of what they wanted to see in Dynamics GP,” Korbel said. With SmartConnect’s integration capabilities, Jonas Software can integrate all their Dynamics GP and Salesforce data, and eliminate the need for manual data entry.
Integrating Salesforce & Dynamics GP Using SmartConnect
One of the significant ways the eOne team helped Jonas Software was by understanding what Dynamics GP and Salesforce needed. “If we’re going to do these things in Salesforce – it was ‘what does GP need from that data?’” Korbel said. “Sometimes, it was as simple as adding a few extra calculations in Salesforce to try and avoid building these extra temp tables or custom stuff that sat in there.”
As the eOne professional service team started to build the integration, it helped Mike and his team gain valuable knowledge, and the eOne team was always willing to help them understand the overall process.
[The eOne professional services team] were great at understanding what data was missing and figuring out where to get it from, Korbel said, “And we were able to re-engineer Salesforce a bit to give them that data.”
Korbel said that for anyone who is looking to tackle an integration project having a clear understanding of the overall goal is important. “More time and scoping will make the job go quicker and understanding the aim,” he said. “For us, a big one was deferrals, and that was just unknown because the process was so manual before. And somebody understanding Salesforce and GP together [is helpful] – eOne filled that gap for us.”
Results
Korbel said that when the project was completed, they were saving at least five days a month just on data entry alone, thanks to SmartConnect. “At least five days a month between reconciliation and fixing errors,” he said. “Taking the human factor out gives us more confidence in our numbers, and it’s eliminated the manual aspect of the two systems getting out of sync. We’re getting much more accurate data.”
Final Thoughts
Korbel describes his experience with eOne as “excellent” even when the scope of the work needed adjustments. “Everything was handled well, pleasantly, and without blame,” he said.
Jonas Software is not done tackling integration projects with eOne. “Now that we have done this, we want to include that (payments), so we will be kicking off another project here shortly,” he said. “(We’re) very satisfied – it’s difficult because you need to have an understanding of both systems. The deferrals and invoicing had a lot of errors and were taking a lot of time – I didn’t want to expand the project. However, as we got into it and learned what there was, we wanted to add more to it.”