Why Use TALEND for Salesforce Data Migration?

Are you facing the following challenges while migrating data to Salesforce?

• Tired of deleting the duplicates manually in Excel?
• Excel keeps hanging up because of large data?
• Applying VLOOKUP again and again for the same data set?
• Duplicating the whole data again for UAT and Production environment?
• Cannot apply complex transformation to your data set?

If you have answered yes to most or all of the questions above, then the solution to your problem is TALEND.

What is TALEND?

TALEND is an open source software integration platform which helps you to turn data into business insights effortlessly.

When we hear the term “Data Migration”, questions like – What is data migration? Why is it needed? How is it done? etc., pop up in our mind.

This article addresses all the basic queries on Data Migration along with the reasons for choosing TALEND as an ETL tool for Salesforce migration.

Which tool should be used in Salesforce Data Migration?

Selecting the right data migration tool depends largely on your needs. There are several data migration tools, but they won’t be of help if they  fail to meet the specific goals and objectives of your company.. Listed below are some points that you might need to consider while choosing an ETL tool.

Let’s understand the Data Migration process before we go ahead and address the aforementioned issues.

What is Data Migration and How Does TALEND Fit in?

As the name itself suggests, data migration is the process in which data is transferred from one system to the other. These transfer systems can be data storage types or file formats. Data from the old system is transferred to a new system through a particular mapping pattern.

The above diagram is a job in TALEND showing how simple it is to extract data from a Source, apply any tansfomation logic and push into different Target destinations.

How is it done?

1. Source Data: TALEND can be used for importing the raw data from different sources, andprocess multiple types and formats of Source data for exampleFile, Database, CRM or API.
2. Data Cleansing: In this process we perform the following steps:

• Detect and Correct (or remove) corrupt or inaccurate records from the dataset.
• Identify incomplete, incorrect, inaccurate or irrelevant parts of the data.
• Replace, modify, or delete the dirty or coarse data.

3. Data Deduplication: After Cleansing the data, Duplicate copies of data are removed from the dataset based on a pre-approved field set.
4. Data Transformation: In this process we transform the data from the Source to match the Target

Data Upload: After the transformation the data is uploaded to the Target system in which TALEND supports multiple platforms for example Excel, SQL server or Salesforce org.

Why choose TALEND?

1. Open Source Software: There are no cost implications for using “Talend Open Studio” or “TOS” since it is an open-source software.

Cost is applied if there is a demand for joint data collaboration.

2. Multiple Source/Target Format supported: We can extract the data directly from Salesforce, transform it, and push it directly into Salesforce without the need of an Excel or any Database. If in any case we do not have an Org to Org connection, we can still extract the data using Excel, manipulate, and load the data into Salesforce using TALEND since it supports all the Excel formats.
3. Faster: We can process and transform the data much faster than Excel as TALEND provides functionalities in which we can change the format, append new data onto existing one and create or remove columns on the go.
4. Reusable: In TALEND once the job is created the same job can be used for different target locations we do not need to transform the whole data again for different environments like (UAT or Production).

In the case of any future modification we just need to append the same job and we will be spared from going through the whole process of transforming the data again.

5. Supports Complex Data Transformation: TALEND provides the tools to perform highly complex transformations and manipulations on the data. It also provided the functionality to write custom scripts in JAVA wherever there is a need for custom transformations

It can also process huge amounts of data which is difficult to manage in Excel.

Conclusion:

While there are several other tools for data migrations in the market, TALEND has become a preferred choice as it provides with the functionality of accessing data more easily, processing it more efficiently and moving it across various target systems very easily.

About Girikon: 

Girikon is a Salesforce consulting and development company offering quality IT services to clients across the globe. Based out in Phoenix, Arizona, the company has presence across Australia and India.  

About Author

Ayush Joshi

Ayush is a Salesforce consultant and Talend Developer with expertise in Data Analysis, Data Migration, and Salesforce Administration jobs. He loves to shares his insights by blogging around ‘Data analysis and various migration techniques’.