Individually, those systems are all enterprise grade and considered best in class; but they only serve to strengthen organizational silos. I should know; I used to be in a sales role accessing Salesforce as a user on a daily basis. And when OpenText rolled out SAP last year, I wasn’t part of the training. Why? Because I had no daily involvement with the processes being implemented. Over the following six months though, I faced regular frustration because, of course, the business world does not map to a simple process. Adhoc, one-off needs are the rule, and I could hardly spell S-A-P (let alone login and find out where my purchase order was!)

At its very core, OpenText Extended ECM recognizes this common problem and connects the worlds of CRM (Salesforce) and ERP (SAP and Oracle) through shared content. Each user in each system can see content and metadata connected to the objects in each of the other systems. Magic (…no not really – just software).

And for those users in the organization who live in neither system (HR and Legal, for example) – they get a web interface via Extended ECM that allows them to look both ways and gain a single, complete view of the customer.

Did someone just say “single, complete view of the customer?” It’s 2018, you can’t hear that phrase and not think “GDPR solution.” What better starting point for GDPR compliance then to ensure your customer data in Salesforce is linked to a content set that is both known and controlled (through the records management policies in Extended ECM).

Think about consistency of data, too. Metadata in ECM systems has always been a bug bear. A worthy sacrifice of time for the knowledgeable, yet a frequently ignored step for many. In Extended ECM we can automatically populate metadata fields using the lead system (Salesforce, SAP, or Oracle) at the point of creation (e.g a new account, a new order). What a huge step towards connected, consistent data sets. A solution to a problem all organizations struggle with (but few want to address).

OpenText Director of Product Management Thomas Demmler recently uploaded a great slideshow describing this in far more detail. I’ve embedded the slideshare below; but you might also like to visit his page to comment and interact here.

Recently, when I have been talking about this solution, particularly in the context of a customer who already uses OpenText Content Suite, or OpenText Extended ECM for SAP – I have carelessly called it the “cherry on top of the cake.” Frankly, that’s a terrible analogy. You can live without the cherry.

OpenText Extended ECM for Salesforce is the jam and buttercream layer that holds the two sponges together and makes the cake into a CAKE. Without this layer – you just have two separate sponges. And trust me – no one ever wanted that.