Costs for setting up data integration tool for Salesforce

I'm writing a report and thought you guys could help by pr开发者_如何学Coviding me with the costs of company support in setting up and training a client on a data integrator for Salesforce. E.g., if someone wants to use Salesforce, but first needs a tool to consolidate and transfer data from back office systems to Salesforce how much would that support service cost?

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Salesforce actually comes with a very good integration tool called Data Loader. It can be run as an interactive application under Windows or Macintosh, or it can be run as a command-line tool on Windows, Mac or Linux.

In interactive mode, it can import & export CSV files.

In batch mode it can also read data from, and write data to, a database.

For example, I have a Linux server where a daily cron job activates the Data Loader which runs several jobs. Some of these jobs run SQL against a database and upload the resulting data into Salesforce. Other jobs extract from Salesforce (using their SOQL query language, which is SQL-like) and store the information into a database.

Data Loader has a bit of a learning curve for batch mode (mostly around creating some XML configuration files), but the Interactive mode is very easy to use.

So, to answer your question... If it's a one-time data load, just run the interactive version and it's easy. If you want regularly-updated data, then use the batch mode. Support costs for operating the integration are really all in the setup. Once it's running, there shouldn't be any on-going costs unless the data structures change and you want to change the data being transferred. Better yet, if the system is setup by somebody who has done it before, you'll avoid a big learning curve.

If you want a figure to put into your report, then allow 3 days for the initial integration (allows for learning curve) and then a half-day for each additional one. That's generous, but provides extra time to debug problems.

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To some degree, it depends on two factors:

• Where is the data's source of truth?
• How often do you want to sync the data?

If the answers are "it's a weird place and I only need to sync it once," then you probably want to figure out how to get it in CSV form and then use tools built into Salesforce to import it.

However, if the data lives in a database or data warehouse (postgres, mysql, mongo, redshift, snowflake, big query, etc) and especially if you want to keep Salesforce up to date with that source of truth continuously, then you could look into so-called "Reverse ETL" tools made for this purpose.

Costs depend on the tool chosen and the data volumes and other factors, but here are some options:

• Grouparoo is an open source Reverse ETL tool. You can host it yourself for free. Paid plans start at $150/month.
• Census is a SaaS Reverse ETL tool. Paid plans start at $300/month.
• Hightouch is a SaaS Reverse ETL tool. Paid plans start at $350/month.