What do you get when you mix three entrepreneurial over-achievers, a gaggle of highly-qualified wine people and a handful of distribution and import licenses that once languished under-appreciated and under-utilized?  You get Massanois Imports, a young, growing company importing and distributing the wines of outstanding, quality-driven, boutique to mid-size wineries from around the world in New York, New Jersey and California.  Massanois is simply the happy conduit, hoping to help customers find the next great wine, whether it be from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Argentina, New Zealand, or right here at home in California, Oregon or Washington State.

Challenge:

Massanois wanted to integrate their ERP system, SAP Business 1 – to their salesforce.com instance – WITHOUT paying crazy annual fees for SAP API Access.  BlackIron Group “invented” an interesting way to integrate to the SAP tool, without the API, using a function called SQL Views (basically permanent queries) to read the SAP DB, and UPSERT (insert or update) the changed or added rows to the salesforce.com database.  We built this integration to move the data one way from SAP to salesforce.com – in about 4 weeks, resulting in a one time charge from BlackIron Group – and no recurring API fees from SAP.  This method (SQL Views) can be applied to virtually any SQL data model as well, from SAGE (MAS500), to NaVision, Visual, Epicor, or any SQL based system.

Solution:

BlackIron Group had previously built an integration to SAP for Massanois.  This integration brought Sales, Invoices and product information to salesforce.com on an hourly basis. Massanois used this data for Sales Reporting, forecasting, and basic Replenishment.  Massanois recently moved their SAP system to the cloud and needed the integration to continue without interruption.  BlackIron Group worked with the cloud hosting provider to move the process from running locally at Massanois to the host. They also wanted to increase the run frequency, to take advantage of mid day sales.

“With The Black Iron Group’s expertly managed integration of SAP and Salesforce, we now have a technology solution that perfectly supports our strategy and goals.” – DeWayne Martin, President, Massanois Imports