They used Salesforce for customer management, a separate project management system for delivery and a financial package for invoicing. Three systems, three teams, three versions of the truth. When a sales rep brought in an order, a manual relay race began: copying data, sending emails, building in an Excel intermediary step. And somewhere in that chain, things would inevitably go wrong.
For this SME: active in technical services with around fifty employees: the situation was recognisable but had become unsustainable. The growth they were going through demanded a different way of working. But the idea of “integrating everything” felt big and vague.
The problem: three systems, three versions of the truth
The core of the problem was simple to summarise: data had to be manually transferred from system to system. That cost time, introduced errors and caused delays. A customer calling to ask about project status couldn’t be helped by the account manager: who first had to call the project manager, who had to look something up in a different system.
Concrete pain points we identified:
- Customer data was manually retyped from Salesforce into the project system for every new assignment
- Project statuses weren’t visible in Salesforce, leaving sales without a current picture of running engagements
- Invoicing triggers were manually passed to the finance team, with delays and errors as a result
- Reports required data from three sources: always a manual exercise
The approach: integrate, don’t replace
A common mistake in these situations is replacing systems that actually work fine for their specific purpose. We took a different angle: keep the existing systems and have them talk to each other via a smart integration layer.
We started by mapping all data points moving between the systems: what goes when from where to where, who initiates the handover and what are the dependencies? That mapping took two days: and prevented weeks of rework later.
We then built the integrations in phases:
- Salesforce → Project system: when an opportunity in Salesforce moves to “Closed Won”, a project is automatically created in the project system, including customer data, scope description and planned start date.
- Project system → Salesforce: project statuses and milestone dates are written back to Salesforce so sales and account management always have current insight without needing to open the project system.
- Project system → Financial package: when an invoicing milestone is reached, an invoice request is automatically created in the financial system, including the correct references and amounts.
Low-code where possible, custom where necessary
Not every integration requires heavy engineering. Part of the connections were built with low-code tooling: fast to build, easy to maintain and adjustable by the client without technical help. Only for more complex logic: such as combining project phases with invoicing rules: did we write custom code.
That combination is deliberate. Custom code is powerful but requires maintenance. Low-code is flexible and accessible to people without a technical background. By choosing the right tool for the right place, the organisation retained control over straightforward adjustments themselves.
The result: one truth, three systems
After implementation, the three systems still each handled their own domain: but they now shared one common reality. Customer data only needed to be entered in one place. Project statuses were visible in real-time to everyone who needed them. And invoices were triggered without manual intervention.
Results after three months:
- Manual data transfer between systems fully eliminated
- Average lead time from order to project start dropped from five days to one and a half
- Invoicing delays caused by human error dropped from weekly occurrences to virtually zero
- Sales now has real-time insight into project status for all active customers
Growth requires connected systems
Many organisations grow with good systems but poor connections. Each system does its job: but the handovers between them cost more energy than the work itself. At small scale, that’s manageable. With growth, it becomes a brake.
Integration isn’t a luxury for large enterprises. It’s the infrastructure that enables your organisation to scale smoothly without needing more and more people to move the same information from A to B.
Do you recognise the three-systems, three-truths situation? We’d be glad to explore what’s possible for your organisation.