The RapidiOnline Blog - Home

Accelerate your salesforce.com to MS Dynamics NAV Integration Project

2011-05-19T13:56:00Z

Talking to many prospects, I often experience that the integration is of low priority when implementing new systems or applications in an organization. Our large experience working with our customers and dealing with several integration projects show us that those companies who embrace data integration in the very beginning when implementing new applications or systems, have a higher success rate than other enterprises that chose to wait and postpone the data integration project.

Starting with the integration at the same time when implementing the systems will leads to a better results and puts down the implementation time of the overall projects, as RapidiOnline is used to load the initial data from e.g. salesforce.com and the data is maintained by RapidiOnline. In that way you can avoid that the data slowly will become inconsistent and heterogeneous across enterprise applications. Instead you will have correct and real-time data available throughout the organization right from the start of the project. So getting started with RapidiOnline as soon as possible to avoid the mismatch and save you for time and work.

If you are thinking about upgrading to a newer version of you e.g. MS Dynamics NAV system and think that it would be best to wait with the integration after you have been upgrading, you can easily start the integration before. It is no problem for RapidiOnline to support older versions. So, again in order to avoid inconsistency of data within your organization you should start the integration as soon as possible.

Listen and learn from one of your customers, who has done the exact thing - populating salesforce.com with MS Dynamics NAV data before getting trained in their CRM system.

Webinar: Integrate salesforce.com with MS Dynamics NAV

2011-05-17T10:32:00Z

Are you using salesforce.com and MS Dynamics NAV? Are you wondering how to get the most out of your salesforce.com and Microsoft NAV investments?

Then join us at our upcoming webinar: Integrate salesforce.com and MS Dynamics NAV and learn how you can have all your key business data available and updated inside salesforce.com to get an overview of the sales and create statistics without having to switch to MS Dynamics NAV.

Listen and learn from our industry expert in integrating salesforce.com and MS Dynamics NAV and our valued customer - Ole Lynggaard A/S - who will share their experience with RapidiOnline.
When: Recorded from Wednesday, 01.06.2011 at 10 AM CET
View the Webinar Now!

During this webinar, you will learn:

* How our customer Ole Lynggaard A/S uses RapidiOnline
* What benefits Ole Lynggaard achieved by using RapidiOnline
* How to maximize the value of both salesforce.com and MS Dynamics NAV
* How easy it is to use RapidiOnline as a integration platform
* How to get started with your integration project
And after the webinar, we'll be hosting a twitter after-party, where experts will answer any of your integration issues or questions on the hashtag #rapidi11.
View the recorded version and the slides
There is limited space available so View the recorded version and the slides

Hope to see you there,
- Beate

5 Good Reasons Integrating your Systems using RapidiOnline

2011-03-22T11:09:00Z

The need for data integration isn't always obvious - especially when you as a business manager, IT manager or even an employee responsible for a business area such as accounting, sales or logistics - are too busy and occupied with trying to make the business prosper.

But having e.g. one accounting system for your financial data and another system for your customer relations or even when you are in retail you have a system for warehousing "living each their own life" is not really useful to a company.
In order to gain an overview from a Business Perspective you need to bind the systems together. But why choose RapidiOnline? Here are 5 good reasons...

Make the vision of a fully integrated business come true

The typical scenario for our customers is that their data is scattered within the company in various systems. The employees spent a lot of time searching for the right information and the finally found they try to make sense of the data in order to get an overview of the Business.

Before implementing RapidiOnline, we had our data in both our local MS Dynamics NAV and in our Warehouse also MS Dynamics NAV, but the systems were not connected, so our employees didn't have real-time access to the necessary data. In the vision of having an integrated warehouse solution, we needed at stable and secure link between those two systems. That why we choose the Replicator 5.0 by RapidiOnline."
Kimberly Johnson, Finance Manager at IMAN Cosmetics

Having data accessible to the relevant people at the right time makes it possible for the employees to get real-time access and an up-to-date overview of the data. The fully integrated business or warehouse solution facilitates reporting and analysing the data as the transferred data now is accessible in the system the employees use for making the reports and statistics.

Minimal implementation time - maximal cost effectiveness

If you are getting started with e.g. salesforce.com you can jump-start your integration project by using RapidiOnline for the initial population of data in salesforce.com. Using RapidiOnline as a "data loader" will be much easier and quicker than having to use e.g. an excel data import function.

With our pre-built integration solutions, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, as we already have made it easy for you by providing an out-of-the-box solution already pre-configured with the most highly desired integration points. This will allow you to get started quickly and extend or customise your integration setup, if you have specific needs.

The pre-configurations help you to shorten the implementation time significantly. All in all a normal integration project using RapidiOnline typical stretch between 10 and 20 hours. After that you should be up and running with a powerful and stable integration between your systems - saving you time and resources.

It’s amazing how quickly I was up and running with the integration and already seeing clear results for my business processes. Two days after signing up for a Trial I had all my invoices inside Salesforce.com and I was able to start building useful reports and dashboards based on my business information. In just about a week we had everything up and running.
Sacha Rose, Managing Director at Derek Rose Ltd.

Not a tool - but a solution ready to use

Ok fine, you decided that a link between your systems is vital. The next challenge faces you: How do we do it? We don't want to spent months and months and a lot of resources into the integration project. We would prefer it to be done pretty quickly - let's say; within 1-2 weeks time - and in an smooth and uncomplicated way. That's where RapidiOnline will be an appropriate match for your integration project, as we can help you speed up the integration project and make it less complicated by providing you with an integration solution, that already is setup with the most common integration points many companies need and ask for.

It’s vital to have good expertise and help in how to integrate the systems in the best way. That’s what we got from RapidiOnline.
Bruce Loxton, Managing Director at Kimberley Group

Expertise and Support

We chose RapidiOnline because of their large experience with data integration and MS Dynamics NAV. The way Michael transferred the data quickly and simply provided strong support and professionalism, made it a pleasure working with RapidiOnline.
Kimberly Johnson, Finance Manager at IMAN Cosmetics

It's always best to illustrate a notion by telling customer stories. At our customer Kimberley Group they already had MS Dynamics NAV in use as their ERP and Manufacturing system. They had decided to use salesforce.com as the front-end towards their dealers and to handle all CRM functionality. After some investigation in search for the right integration partner Bruce Loxton, Managing Director of Kimberley Group, found that RapidiOnline certainly could deliver the solution to integrate the systems. Not only because he found out that RapidiOnline has a vast knowledge and expertise in integrating MS Dynamics NAV and other system from way back when MS Dynamics NAV (Navision) just started. In addition to that RapidiOnline also have a vast experience in designing integrated business processes that Kimberley could leverage.

We chose RapidiOnline because of their large experience with data integration and MS Dynamics NAV. We looked at other data integration solutions for Salesforce, but these people don’t have nearly the same experience or the same deep support for integration to MS Dynamics NAV as RapidiOnline.
Peter Grandt, Online Manager at Milestone Systems A/S

Control and flexibility

For IMAN Cosmetics, it was vital that they would be in control of the data and that they had the ability to manage their data themselves. Furthermore they want-ed to be able to create reports and analyze their data themselves which required that they have all their transactional data accessible in their local MS Dynamics NAV.

IMAN is a hands-on, fast paced organisation. By using RapidiOnline, we gained the ability to manage our data ourselves, instead of having a third party consultant involved, which used to slow down our business routines. With RapidiOnline, we now have full control over our data and we have the flexibility we need.
Kimberly Johnson, Finance Manager at IMAN Cosmetics

Salesforce.com and MS Dynamics NAV Integration

2011-02-05T12:13:00Z

Derek Rose specialises in the highest quality men’s and ladies’ pyjamas, dressing gowns, nightshirts, loungewear and boxer shorts. The company exports over two thirds of our night wear throughout the world to the finest boutiques and department stores in most cities and towns from Norway to Australia, and Hong Kong to Argentina. The company needed to bind they salesforce.com together with MS Dynamics NAV...Read about the Managing Director Sacha Rose's experience with using the Salesforce.com - MS Dynamics Integration Solution.

Introduction

Our starting point was that we bought a new system, MS Dynamics NAV. I spent a long time researching salesforce.com and whether it was right for us or not. Back then I could see the benefits of having that system and I liked the idea of software-as-a-service, but I could not see how we could make it work for us.

The funny thing was that I didn’t realise that I had a need for integration, before I came across RapidiOnline. Having one accounting system and another system for your customer relations are not useful to a company. In order to gain an overview from a Business Perspective you need to bind the systems together. When I came across RapidiOnline I realised that their Salesforce.com - MS Dynamics integration service was the missing link to make Salesforce.com viable for us. Without RapidiOnline salesforce.com would not be very useful to us and for reporting purposes we would have endured greater complexity and costs if we only worked in NAV.

The Solution:
Minimal Implementation time - maximal cost effectiveness Easy and fast population of useful data to Salesforce.com
Initially RapidiOnline was used to copy all product and customer information for salesforce.com so that Derek Rose was able to get started using salesforce.com populated with useful data instead of e.g. using an excel data import function which would not have been as fast as using RapidiOnline for the data transfer.
Deep Visibility on sold Products
As it is crucial for Derek Rose to be able to see the company’s pipeline of orders, all outstanding orders including status and product information are transferred to salesforce.com. All customer information in MS Dynamics NAV is integrated with accounts in salesforce.com. All sales, invoices and credit notes are transferred to salesforce.com to allow for deep visibility on sold products.

Easy creation of custom and industry specific reports Custom fields like colour, pattern, model, buying season and fabric type are transferred for each invoice line enabling Derek Rose to create custom and industry-specific reports within salesforce.com.

Easy mobile access to crucial business data in a cost-effective way

Having all the data inside salesforce.com integrated with the mobile solution for salesforce.com Derek Rose has mobile access to all their key business data in a very easy and cost-effective way. The solution is very cost-effective for Derek Rose as it was very quick and easy to setup and much more economical than alternative solutions such as a web-based portal for MS Dynamics NAV - which would require additional licensing costs, extra servers and time consuming set-up, development and installation. The mobile solution was up and running at a fraction of the costs of what traditional implementation methods would cost and Derek Rose’s Managing Director could do the set-up with little support from the RapidiOnline Team.
Overview of Business Performance
Now having RapidiOnline linking our MS Dynamics NAV and Salesforce.com together I’m able to see sales related data such as my account, contact and invoice data in different reports and dashboards, which gives me an quick overview of how my business is performing. I even get key metrics by daily email.
More efficient Business Process, More Competitiveness
Being able to make reports of my sales related data in combination with having access to these reports on my iphone give me the flexibility and mobility I need to run my Business more efficiently enabling me to make more money. Now I’m able to give my customers the right and up-to-date information they need, even when I’m out at the customer itself. I just have a look on my mobile and the information is there. In today’s business world it’s important to be able to react quickly to be competitive.
RapidiOnline Expertise and Support
It was important to have Michael’s involvement in the process. He gave me a sense of confidence in the product and the solution as a whole. The consultancy of RapidiOnline made it clear that it was the right solution for us. With Michael’s patience and confidence about the product I felt I was in good hands without feeling any pressure about a financial investment right away. His first priority was to help me as a customer to get the integration to work according to my needs and wishes.
Up and running in no time
“It’s amazing how quickly I was up and running with the integration and already seeing clear results for my business processes. Two days after signing up for a Trial I had all my invoices inside Salesforce.com and I was able to start building useful reports and dashboards based on my business information. In just about a week we had everything up and running.”
Sales Agent Worldwide Connected
There are still a lot of things to do, but the basics are running for my business. What I would like to see in the future is having all my sales agent worldwide connected to the system. The crème de la crème for me from a Business Perspective would be having the placed orders and confirmed customers orders connected to my others systems. Which I’m pretty sure can be done!

Check out their Customer Success Story

How to connect between two MS Dynamics NAV Databases

2011-01-17T06:40:00Z

Connecting between two MS Dynamics NAV databases is facilitated through the Replicator 5.0. By using the Replicator you can setup and maintain distributed MS Dynamics NAV databases. The Replicator is designed to handle both small and large installations.

Maybe you are a company with just a few laptops that need to be replicated with a central server. Or…maybe you are a retail chain with e.g. 180+ stores. And each store is running its own local MS Dynamics NAV database, but all these stores need to report back to the central headquarter. This can easily be done by replicating all the data from the stores with the central MS Dynamics NAV using the Replicator.

Here are some scenarios in which the Replicator is used:

As a Server Replication

with local MS Dynamics NAV servers in each department or country

The Server Replication Solution is used when

you have departments or companies abroad from where the employees cannot work directly on the headquarter system – either due to low bandwidth security matters.
you have inter company trade based on several accounts or MS Dynamics NAV databases.

Benefits:

you have better performance and up-time in each department or country

you can reduce the need for high bandwidth compared to a citrix solution

you can have different country versions of MS Dynamics NAV in each country

As a Salesman or NGO Integration Solution

This solution suits you as a company that has salesmen or an NGO has workers

who need to work offline with a local copy of the MS Dynamics NAV database on their laptop.
each travelling salesman has his/her own local MS Dynamics NAV database on their laptop.
their can work offline and data can be replicated to and from the central database at regular intervals such as once a day.

As a Retail Solution:

This solution is ideal in retail solutions where each store has its own MS Dynamics NAV database and you need to exchange data with a central MS Dynamics NAV.

Benefits

Each store has its own MS Dynamics NAV database.
In each store you have optimal performance and you can continue to work and sell even though the internet is down.
Data can be managed centrally and collected centrally.

How to integrate salesforce.com, MS Dynamics NAV and Joomla Webshop

2010-12-28T12:00:00Z

In 2010, Bruce Loxton had a problem… how to integrate his Salesforce CRM data with his Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) data? The Solution? RapidiOnline made his data integration easy. In this video, Michael Bock from RapidiOnline Interviews Bruce Loxton about why he chose them to help him.

Donation for a better World - The 1% Model

2010-12-10T01:52:00Z

RapidiOnline has embraced this simple idea to Donate 1% of RapidiOnline's resources to support organisations that are working to make our world a better place.
This year we donated 1% of our total Turnover to Red Cross, Medicins Sans Frontieres and Shelterbox- as we think these are three organisations that contributed with their work for a better world. Furthermore we are also donating 1% of our time to different projects - mainly helping out in projects organised by Rotary International

New RapidiOnline Logo

2010-12-01T01:45:00Z

The new icon in our new logo is symbolising communication and connection between different systems. The blue dot in the icon is the RapidiOnline Service which acts like a hub connecting all systems and applications.
We chose the colors blue to indicate freshness, speed, modern and dynamic thinking. The color grey to go with the blue to symbolise groundness with lot of experience and quality in our work we do.

Improved RapidiOnline Account Managment

2010-09-20T12:52:00Z

In our constant eager of improving the use of RapidiOnline for our customers, we have been making some major improvements on the management of accounts and user settting.

It has become easier for account administrators to manage users associated with their account and to invite new users. Also we have added some new features regarding password policies and password reset.

Direct Access to Your User Settings

In general the user and account handling has been moved away from the RapidiOnline home page and into the RapidiOnline service area. In this way, you will have easy access to user and account settings via links in the top of the window as long as you are logged in in the service area. You now have a settings menu where you can edit your user information, change password and change email.

Easy to Add New Users to the same Account

As an account administrator (the first user that sign up from a company) you now have an account menu where you can view account information, associate users, invite new users and change your password policies. The account administrator has now an additional way to associate other users with the company account - and thereby giving them access to their RapidiOnline service(s). Now they can invite a new user to signup on RapidiOnline; The new user will get an email with a link and after entering the normal signup information, he/she will automatically be associated with the account and have access to the service(s). This should make it easier to add new users to the same account.

Possibility to set up a More Detailed Password Policy

Account administrators can now also edit password policies for the account. You can set when passwords should expire (30 days, 60 days, 90 days etc) and also if users can reuse old passwords. Furthermore we now check how many failed login attempt a user has done, and if a user has more than 5 failed login attempts, he/she is locked out from the service for 15 minutes.

NOTE: Existing accounts do not enforce password expire or prohibit password reuse until the administrator sets this up.

Password Reset

We now let you select a password question (password hint) and enter the corresponding answer in the change password window. The forgot password functionality has been redesigned so that we now send you an email with a link. When you click on the link, you can enter the answer to your password hint question and then you can set a new password.

NOTE: Existing users should take a moment to change their password and establish a password question/answer so that they can use the forgot password feature if needed later.

Change email address

The change email functionality has been redesigned to be more secure: When you want to change your email address, we will email a link to the old email address and ask you to confirm the email address change. This ensures that nobody can steel an account by using a logged in session to change the email address (and maybe later use the forgot password facility to get a new password).

More Resources on the Configuration Interface

How do we guarantee Secure Data Transfer

2010-09-16T14:08:00Z

We are often asked how we guarantee that your data is secure when using RapidiOnline.
To remove any doubt on whether our services are secure or not please find the most common points in this articles on data security when using RapidiOnline Services.

Find answers on storing customer data, SSL encryption, Monitoring, Hosting center etc...

Below are a few points about how we secure that your data is safe when using RapidiOnline.

no customer data is stored on our servers
any customer credentials that are stored in our configuration databases are stored encryptet with high security encryption method (3DES 1024 bit keys). The key used, is separate per customer/service and is only stored in encrypted form on the server. This is a Salesforce.com recommended and approved way of storing the credentials.
all connections over net can use SSL encryption
we use a high availability and high security hosting center (interNAP, Atlanta)
every customer has his own process and own configuration database centrally on our servers.
RapidiOnline is Salesforce.com AppExchange certified (includes security and availability review)
we monitor the transfer services and schedules and can take action if things are not running correctly.
our Hosting Partner monitors our central servers and processes (database servers, web-servers, application servers etc.) and takes action within a few minutes if something is not running. And this works - they really fix things fast - even in the middle of their night !
access to systems: after the initial setup is done, the rights for e.g. the Navision user that is used to access Navision, can be limited to only allow read or writes to the tables that we transfer data to/from. As this is set on the Navision server side and as we are using the same way to access Navision as the Navision clients (through c/front) it is a quite effective way to limit access to Navision. The same is true for other systems like MS Dynamics AX, MS-SQL etc.

If you have any remaining questions or you need a higher level of security, please contact us. We can on request provide higher levels of security, like custom SSL certificates.

What is the RapidiConnector and how to install it?

2010-06-10T15:02:00Z

The RapidiConnector is a small windows service that runs in the background and features the connection between the local system (for example MS Dynamics NAV) and the central RapidiOnline service.

The RapidiConnector: Communication… fast and secure

The RapidiOnline Services run with a unique technology called the RapidiConnector that ensures compressed and secure data transfer between RapidiOnline and the different On-Premise systems. For best efficiency and security the data is compressed and encrypted. Our aim is to provide services that take advantage of this unique technology in order to make it easier and faster for you to get started. Our unique technology ensures that the On-Demand solution is working just as efficient as the On-Premise version.

RapidiConnector: Reduced time and bandwidth

The RapidiConnector resides in your On-Premise network connecting outbound to the central RapidiOnline Service and enables two-way communication between RapidiOnline and your On-Premise systems.

The Benefits

You don’t have to change anything in your network or firewalls in order to deploy RapidiOnline integration.
Very easy to get started.
Your internal systems stay secured and protected.
The connections from the RapidiConnector are all outbound to RapidiOnline. No inbound connections are made and no inbound ports have to be opened in your firewall.This makes it very easy to get started and your internal systems stay secured and protected.

Highly effective data transfer
The communication between RapidiOnline and the RapidiConnector is using a proprietary protocol which is highly efficient in terms of reducing the total amount of data and the number of packages sent and received to an absolute minimum. The protocol first joins e.g. 50 records in 1 package thereby stripping off all Meta information, so that only the relevant data is sent. Furthermore the package is compressed before sending. This results in the most efficient data transfer. This method can reduce the amount of data needed to be sent by a factor up to 50. This means e.g. instead of sending 1000 bytes for each customer record the RapidiConnector only needs to send 20 bytes. This reduces both the time and the bandwidth needed dramatically.

Increased secure data transmission
Because of the proprietary protocol and the compression it is practically impossible to decipher the data transmitted. This increases the security. If extra security is needed the data can also be encrypted.

To install and Setup the RapidiConnector

Please do the following:

Login to RapidiOnline
Select your RapidiOnline Service
Select Configure
Choose the DataSource that you want to install the RapidiConnector for (for example MS Dynamics NAV)
Click the little red arrow in front of "RapidiConnector"
Download and Install the RapidiConnector
Follow the Instructions on the page to setup the RapidiConnector
Verify that the RapidiConnector connects correctly - see the Dashboard

How to easily get an overview of your Sales Orders in Salesforce.com

2010-04-01T10:37:00Z

Learn how you easily can get an overview of your sales orders inside Salesforce.com by transferring all the booked invoices from your MS Dynamics NAV to Salesforce.com

Watch our Webinar on the next page to learn more.

How to integrate your MS Dynamics NAV with your Salesforce.com (26.3.2010) from RapidiOnline on Vimeo.

In this webinar we will show you how easy it is to integrate your salesforce.com crm system with your MS Dynamics NAV. We will go through a live demo transferring changed customer information from MS Dynamics NAV to Salesforce.com. Furthermore we wil show you have easy you can get an overview of your business data by having your salesforce.com CRM integrated with MS Dynamics NAV ERP system

How to easily and effective integrate your MS Dynamics NAV with your Salesforce.com CRM

2010-03-29T12:35:00Z

How to integrate your MS Dynamics NAV with your Salesforce.com (26.3.2010) from RapidiOnline on Vimeo.

View the slides from this webinar

Data Backbone Software A/S has become Rapidi ApS

2010-03-09T10:56:00Z

Data Backbone Software A/S is pleased to announce its recent name change to Rapidi ApS. We are exited about this opportunity to have both Rapidi ApS and our sister company based in France Rapidi S.A.R.L operating under the same Brand – RapidiOnline.

RapidiOnline was founded almost 4 years ago with the objective to develop a true Saas-based data integration platform - based on Data Backbone's powerful technology. This platform has now proven its success with many customer installations. It is therefore now time for us to move on to a new era!

Support

We continue to fully support our existing customers, partners and products. For support requests please go to http://www.rapidionline.com/support and submit a case.

New Opportunities for Partners

As a partner you will have the possibility to offer our Saas-based products to your customers. Our existing partners will be contacted shortly regarding these new possibilities. We will also continue to sell, support and maintain the Replicator for MS Dynamics NAV product .

Our Contact Information
RapidiOnline

Rapidi ApS
Sdr. Tingvej 10
6630 Rødding
Denmark
+45 73 84 85 50

Rapidi S.A.R.L
19, Grand Rue
11500 Quillan
France
+33 468 206 200

info@rapidionline.com
www.rapidionline.com
Again, we are exited about this opportunity and look forward to continuing to serve your needs.

Best Regards,

Michael Bock
Managing Director

Webinars: Integrate your MS Dynamics NAV with other MS Dynamics NAV Databases

2009-11-20T10:31:00Z

Are you looking for a user-friendly and cost-effective solution that integrates your MS Dynamics NAV with other MS Dynamics NAV databases?
Then you should learn more about RapidiOnline – our on demand integration platform.
Register for our free webinars and learn how easy and within a short time frame can integrate your systems.

Attending the Webinars will give you several Benefits
- How to save time and money using RapidiOnline as your integration platform
- Knowledge on how to build data integration solutions on one platform
- Gain a Competitive Advantage, as you have the possibility – as a RapidiOnline Partner – to offer your customers an even more flexible solution
- And a lot more ;o)...
Register for a session below:

Integrate multiple MS Dynamics NAV Databases using RapidiOnline

Friday 04.12.2009 – 10 AM CET | 9 AM GMT Register >>

Friday 11.12.2009 – 5 PM CET | 11 AM EST | 8 AM PST Register >>
Once registered you will receive an email confirming your registration with information you need to join the Webinar.
Kind Regards,
Your RapidiOnline Team

The RapidiOnline Blog - Home

Accelerate your salesforce.com to MS Dynamics NAV Integration Project

Webinar: Integrate salesforce.com with MS Dynamics NAV

View the Webinar Now!

5 Good Reasons Integrating your Systems using RapidiOnline

Make the vision of a fully integrated business come true

Minimal implementation time - maximal cost effectiveness

Not a tool - but a solution ready to use

Expertise and Support

Control and flexibility