Closing the data gap: Snowflake and Salesforce launch integrations

Partnership highlights a growing trend towards data consolidation – and underscores the urgency of data integrity testing

Snowflake launched two integrations with Salesforce last week that are designed to eliminate data gaps, make data more accessible, and deliver richer data-driven customer experiences. If you’re a user of either tool, these integrations will allow you to easily unify and analyze data in the new Snowflake Cloud Data Platform and visualize it in Tableau and Salesforce.

The integrations include:

• Einstein Analytics Output Connector for Snowflake: This capability simplifies moving Salesforce data into Snowflake, bringing together Salesforce data with other data already residing in Snowflake and making it available to query with business intelligence tools such as Einstein Analytics and Tableau.
• Einstein Analytics Direct Data for Snowflake: With this capability, you can directly query Snowflake data from Einstein Analytics. This includes Salesforce data, as well as data generated from business applications, mobile apps, web activity, and IoT devices.

The partnership highlights a growing trend towards the consolidation of enterprise data into a cloud-based repository – including data generated via Salesforce and other business applications, data acquired through third parties, and data that’s stored in data warehouses, data marts, and data lakes – a trend that is accelerating as enterprises quickly pivot amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Access to timely, trustworthy information – that is easy to analyze – has never been more important as organizations are looking to empower everyone to make faster, more informed decisions rooted in data,” said Adam Selipsky, President and CEO of Tableau, in a press release announcing the integrations.

The pandemic has made the urgency of a holistic data strategy – including a way to test and verify data integrity – even more pressing. Companies need accurate information to quickly make difficult decisions as they adapt their strategies to the current environment.

In an interview with SiliconANGLE, Informatica President Tracy Newell said, “You’ve got to have a trusted and really strong analytical approach to making the decisions that clients are going to be forced to make coming out of this situation, and the data’s integrity has never been more important.”

Data integrity issues cost organizations $15 million annually, on average, according to Gartner. And $3.1 trillion overall is wasted finding and fixing data issues each year, according to Harvard Business Review. In an environment that requires businesses to pivot quickly and creatively, there is neither time nor money to waste.

So how do you ensure that the data you’re integrating across multiple sources and varying data structures is trustworthy enough to make potentially business-altering decisions? And after an integration, how can you ensure that ongoing modifications don’t interfere with business processes or create unnecessary risks?

Verifying data integrity during and after integration

Tricentis offers the only solution for data integrity testing across the enterprise, from disparate data entering your system, to integrations, transformations, and migrations, to report logic and presentation. Tricentis Data Integrity testing automates end-to-end data testing, covering all reconciliation and data validation tasks from any source or technology, as well as visualizations and reports in any analytics tool.

With Tricentis, you can automate testing for virtually any enterprise application – including Salesforce and Snowflake – as well as the extensive, cross-system integrations, multi-business data flows and end-to-end business process tests that are required in complex enterprise environments.

Tricentis Data Integrity testing takes advantage of the unique capabilities of Snowflake and other cloud data warehouses. For example, using Snowflake Time Travel, a historical data access feature, we create tests that profile and monitor changes in the data as it enters the process – not at the end when bad data can impact users’ decision-making. Many Tricentis customers have used Snowflake migration as an opportunity to modernize and transform their approach to data integrity with Tricentis.

To learn more about how to ease the transition to Snowflake and other cloud data warehouses, register for the June 18 webinar: Ensure data integrity during a cloud data warehouse migration.