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What You'll Learn
Modern enterprises are under constant pressure to extract more value from their data, without disrupting the systems their teams rely on every day. Salesforce often sits at the heart of customer engagement, but as data volumes grow and use cases expand (analytics, AI, compliance, real-time insights), native CRM capabilities alone can struggle to keep up. Rebuilding or replacing Salesforce isn’t realistic for most organizations. Instead, a smarter approach is layering Informatica on top of Salesforce for modernizing data while preserving the CRM foundation.
The Challenge: Data Complexity Inside and Around Salesforce
Salesforce excels at managing customer interactions, sales processes, and service workflows. However, challenges arise when organizations need to:
- Integrate Salesforce with dozens of upstream and downstream systems
- Maintain consistent, trusted customer data across platforms
- Govern sensitive data for privacy, security, and regulatory compliance
- Enable advanced analytics and AI without overloading CRM workflows
Custom code and point-to-point integrations often solve one problem while creating three more, technical debt, performance issues, and brittle architectures.
Why “Layering” Beats Rebuilding
Layering Informatica on Salesforce means decoupling data management from application logic. Salesforce continues to do what it does best, powering CRM experiences, while Informatica handles data integration, quality, governance, and orchestration across the enterprise.
This approach delivers modernization without disruption:
- No CRM replacement – Users keep familiar Salesforce interfaces and processes
- Faster time to value – Data capabilities improve without long reimplementation cycles
- Future-ready architecture – New systems, clouds, and data sources can be added without reworking Salesforce
How Informatica Complements Salesforce in Modernizing Data
Informatica acts as an intelligent data layer around Salesforce, enabling capabilities that are difficult or costly to build natively:
1. Enterprise-Grade Data Integration
Informatica connects Salesforce with ERP systems, data warehouses, data lakes, and third-party platforms using scalable, reusable pipelines. This reduces custom integrations and improves reliability.
2. Data Quality and Master Data Management
By standardizing, cleansing, and matching customer data, Informatica ensures Salesforce users work with accurate, consistent records, critical for sales forecasting, marketing personalization, and customer service.
3. Data Governance and Compliance
Informatica provides centralized metadata management, lineage, and policy enforcement. Sensitive data flowing into or out of Salesforce can be governed consistently, supporting regulations like GDPR and CCPA.
4. Analytics and AI Enablement
Instead of forcing heavy analytics workloads into Salesforce, Informatica prepares and delivers trusted data to BI tools, AI platforms, and cloud data warehouses, unlocking insights without slowing CRM performance.
A Practical Strategy for Modernizing Data
Layering Informatica on Salesforce supports an incremental modernization model:
- Start with integration to stabilize data flows
- Add data quality and governance to build trust
- Extend to analytics and AI using governed, reusable data assets
Each step delivers value on its own, while collectively moving the organization toward a modern, data-driven architecture.
How LumenData Can Help Modernizing Data
LumenData specializes in helping enterprises modernize their data ecosystems by effectively layering Informatica capabilities on platforms like Salesforce. With deep expertise across Informatica, cloud data platforms, and CRM environments, LumenData helps organizations design scalable architectures, implement best practices for data governance and quality, and accelerate time to value without disrupting business operations. Their approach focuses on aligning data strategy with real-world business outcomes, ensuring Salesforce remains a powerful front-end while Informatica enables trusted, enterprise-wide data intelligence behind the scenes.
Conclusion
Modernizing data doesn’t require tearing out the systems your business depends on. By layering Informatica on Salesforce, organizations can unlock integration, governance, and analytics capabilities that scale with their needs, while protecting CRM investments and user adoption. It’s a pragmatic, future-proof path to becoming a truly data-driven enterprise.
About LumenData
LumenData is a leading provider of Enterprise Data Management, Cloud and Analytics solutions and helps businesses handle data silos, discover their potential, and prepare for end-to-end digital transformation. Founded in 2008, the company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with locations in India.
With 150+ Technical and Functional Consultants, LumenData forms strong client partnerships to drive high-quality outcomes. Their work across multiple industries and with prestigious clients like Versant Health, Boston Consulting Group, FDA, Department of Labor, Kroger, Nissan, Autodesk, Bayer, Bausch & Lomb, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Cummins, Gilead, HP, Nintendo, PC Connection, Starbucks, University of Colorado, Weight Watchers, KAO, HealthEdge, Amylyx, Brinks, Clara Analytics, and Royal Caribbean Group, speaks to their capabilities.
For media inquiries, please contact: marketing@lumendata.com.
Authors
Content Writer
VP of Salesforce Center of Excellence
