Storing Data outside of the Salesforce System – Top Considerations with an Efficient Roadmap

Salesforce, as a popular CRM platform, has revamped the manner in which companies manage their sales department and keep track of its productivity. Employees across all enterprise departments actively use Salesforce to monitor their data as it helps them manage interactions with their ongoing customers and follow-up with the potential customers. But the main concern of Salesforce admins and managers is where should those documents be stored? A storage optimization strategy is extremely important else the data storage costs can quickly pile up.

There is a great way to combat the storage issues without overloading the internal storage systems of Salesforce. An external storage system, also referred to as auxiliary storage and secondary storage system, can be deployed to ease some of the difficulties. All the addressable data, records, files, and other material can be easily stored outside of Salesforce’s main storage. This kind of external storage enables users to store relevant data separately from Salesforce’s native storage at a relatively lower cost.

But most enterprises hesitate to export sensitive business data outside their secure Salesforce ecosystem. Even then, integrating an external storage system can reform your Salesforce Org immensely. There are several means of external storage available, but cloud storage format has bypassed most of them in terms of usability and longevity. Choosing the correct type of storage that suits your needs and then deploying it for your Org requires thorough planning. We have put together a simple list of things that you should keep in mind while making this decision:

• Choosing the external storage system– The first step towards establishing a trustworthy storage strategy is deciding which external cloud system best suits your needs. Multiple factors such as its storage space, ease of deployment, reliability, and life expectancy come into play at this juncture. An ideal storage system is surely one where you have a vast amount of storage at your disposal at a lower price. Also you should opt for such a system that is promising enough to stay in the market for a long period of time by frequently updating itself.
• Integrating it with your Salesforce application– Once you have selected the ideal external storage system for your Org, the next thing you need to do is link that system with your Salesforce application. For doing this, the prime factor is the compatibility of the external system with Salesforce. Currently Salesforce CRM is compatible with several systems like SharePoint, Google Drive, AWS, Heroku, and Azure.
• Security assessment– Another important thing is performing a detailed assessment of the security features of the external storage system. Since the data is usually sensitive in nature and highly prone to malware and accidental loss, having a secure external storage is topmost priority. Here it is always good to check if the storage system offers the data encryption feature. This makes the storage system more secure and reliable.
• Cost assessment– Perhaps the make-or-break factor during the entire decision-making process is the storage system’s cost. As you would be looking for an external storage to avoid purchasing the expensive additional Salesforce storage, it is best that the external storage is less costly. Also be mindful of some additional expenses if there are customizations involved, before deploying the system.
• Ease of data migration– Another thing you must check before making any decisions is the adroitness of the external storage system. As a massive amount of data will have to be transferred from the internal storage to the external storage, the system’s transfer speed has an important role to play. This not only reduces the need for manual labor but also saves time in the future.
• Easy data accessibility– Accessing the data seamlessly stored in the external storage is one of the topmost requirements. This also includes viewing the data right from the Salesforce system without hindering the user-experience. Always make sure that your external storage system promotes this feature.

After you have made a choice for your enterprise, it is best if you use this external storage to archive the old legacy Salesforce data. DataArchiva, a data archiving tool easily available on the Salesforce AppExchange, can help you in this respect. DataArchiva is an EXTERNAL data archiving solution that lets Salesforce customers archive their historical data such as old emails, contacts, cases, leads, and much more automatically and then store it in their preferred external storage system without losing out on the data integrity. You can easily view your archived data stored externally in the Salesforce internal system itself, perform custom search operations on the archived data, and set up policies and permissions for viewing the data, which grants additional security and data integrity.

Currently, DataArchiva supports several Cloud and On-premise database service platform providers like Amazon, Google, Azure, Heroku including various databases such as Postgres, Redshift, MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL, and more. To know more about DataArchiva, please get in touch with us.