Oracle Eloqua Integrations: What’s the Difference?

Oracle Eloqua has some great capabilities when it comes to integrating with your respective CRM system. Two that we work with often are Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, so we decided to break it down for you: What are the biggest differences when integrating the systems? Is one more easily integrated with Oracle Eloqua? Should you even integrate them at all? There’s a lot we could say about this topic, so let’s dive in.

Terminology

We’ll start off with the basics. One striking difference between the two CRM systems is the terminology. The main CRM record types – such as contacts, leads, and accounts – referred to in Salesforce as “objects,” are deemed “entities” in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Additionally, although Salesforce uses human-readable values in its pick lists, Dynamics uses GUIDs (Globally Unique Identifiers) to configure pick list values. For example, in Microsoft Dynamics, states are identified using four-digit number codes. 

Data Flow

Another difference is in the data flow, which determines how information will pass between your CRM and your Oracle Eloqua instance. If you’re looking for direct one-to-one linkage between your CRM contacts and accounts, and your Oracle Eloqua contacts and accounts, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will work just fine. If, however, you’d like the flexibility of passing data from related objects to your accounts and contacts – such as the contact or account owner, or account data to its linked contact – Salesforce would be the way to go.

Your data flow can change on a case-by-case basis, depending on your specific needs and goals. Typically, anything you’d want to use for marketing segmentation can be brought from your CRM to your Eloqua instance, but where this changes is when you ask yourself what should come from Eloqua back to your CRM. Why wouldn’t you want to bring everything over? Some people may not want to pay for extra data space in their CRM, and instead will just keep their information in Eloqua, or they may just not have an idea of where they want to tie it.

Overall Integration challenges

No matter which CRM system you use, there are some common decisions to make when preparing for an integration. Many teams have some difficulty when it comes to determining what fields should be brought over to Oracle Eloqua, and how they should be organized – whether on the contact record, account record, or in a custom data object. The roadblock is often due to the marketing, sales and IT teams’ different uses for your data. In order to avoid delays, sit down before beginning the integration process to create a list of priorities for each team. Identify what’s working for everyone in your current business process, pain points that could use some help, and areas you can leverage Eloqua’s capabilities to automate everyday tasks. With all that on the table, you can reach an agreement that combines structured data transfers with the flexibility marketers need for effective targeting and the visibility to help sales close the deal.

Why not integrate?

There are a number of reasons why your organization may opt out of integrating your CRM and Oracle Eloqua instances.

1. You are a newer Eloqua user and your CRM team may not have the resources to fully implement an integration.
2. Your marketing team may decide to focus on email sends first, and then tackle integration at a later time.
3. Your company may have records that haven’t been cleaned up recently, making integration more complicated. This is the most common reason integration may be delayed.

If I do integrate, how can I make sure it goes smoothly?

There are a few things that you can do before you integrate Oracle Eloqua and your CRM to set yourself up for success.

1. Identify what you hope to get out of the integration as a whole. This will help you to focus your goals and keep the project on track.
2. Sit down with all key players (typically marketing, sales, and IT) and decide which information needs to be standardized.
3. Make sure each team has the same definition of a qualified lead. Then, look at the meaningful lead stages to each party, and set expectations as to who owns each, and how each team will work together to keep each other accountable.
4. Decide what the end testing process looks like. 

Hopefully these tips and things to look out for during your integration helped you understand the nuances of integrating Oracle Eloqua with either Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Do you still have more questions? Did we inspire you to integrate, but you want to know more before you start? Do you have any tips that we missed? Contact us, we love helping customers with all of their marketing automation needs.