Salesforce and Jira Integration Using Goldfinger’s CRM Plugin Helps Say Media Achieve Business Efficiency and Cost Savings

January 3rd 2019 | posted in CRM app for Jira

“This plugin is effortless. A quick install and you are up and running, seamlessly collaborating between two of our most critical software platforms (Salesforce and JIRA). Within our environment, it eliminated an entire project management software solution and saved countless hours of productivity. A great product!”

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Adrian Dunne
Director of IT, Say Media

Background

Say Media is a vertically integrated content network of independent content creators who build passionate communities around consumer interests such as style, living, food, and technology. The company provides simple, accountable ways for the world’s top brands to engage with their passionate audiences at scale. Say Media’s digital publishing platform, Tempest, and media services provide clients with web presence and ad related monetization. The company has 450 million monthly page views across its network of nearly 40 partners. Current publishing partners include RachaelRay.com, Airows, xoJane, Fashionista, Biography.com, and Cupcakes and Cashmere.

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Environment

Say Media uses Salesforce Enterprise Edition for its 90 active users as well as Atlassian Jira Server and Jira Server Agile. Its IT support team (an IT Analyst, Sr. IT Analyst, and Director of IT) are in charge of the implementation and maintenance of the Goldfinger (formerly Go2Group) CRM Plugin. All software is hosted in the Say Media data center.

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Challenges

Say Media was using an antiquated task management product to connect to Salesforce and synchronize opportunities and creative assets from the sales staff and site producers to the creative studio. The system had not been updated due to a fragile synchronization process that depended on custom code. Upgrading just the non-custom components would be lower risk but would miss feature and stability improvements that the company needed. The IT department wanted to find a way to upgrade to Atlassian Jira, but Say Media was hesitant to transition from its already complex integration and was unsure of how the change would affect its 90 active Salesforce users. Implementing the Goldfinger CRM Plugin would require process changes and re-education for the users working in Salesforce.

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Solution

Because the company did not have a proper Atlassian Jira testbed, the Say Media and Goldfinger teams worked carefully together on the first implementation, using Say Media’s production environment, beginning with several months of testing and process refinement.

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With a proper, pre-production test environment, changes were implemented much more rapidly. The most recent implementation was live just a few days after the requirements were gathered. During the process, Say Media used Goldfinger’s knowledge base to submit bug reports and feature requests and to review other CRM Plugin users’ experiences and implementation. The knowledge base has been an invaluable resource.

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The CRM Plugin interface is intuitive enough to ensure users require no technical support. The customer found the “CRM Configuration: Field Select” interface in the Jira/CRM Field Mappings screen especially useful. It clearly identifies existing fields and relationships within Salesforce that are not immediately obvious without a significant understanding of the underlying architecture of Salesforce. Using this interface, even a non-technical user can make sense of the data that is stored in Salesforce.

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Results

The Goldfinger CRM Plugin allowed Say Media’s creative studio and ad operations teams to use Jira as their project management platform. By standardizing on one project management platform, Say Media streamlined and simplified its workflow. Atlassian Jira was previously isolated to the engineering department. Based on the demonstrated effectiveness of the CRM Plugin, other departments have expressed an interest in moving to Jira. “The Goldfinger CRM Plugin has impacted the success of our organization in allowing new employees an opportunity to quickly learn and ramp up using a project management application used widely throughout the organization. Many of us live and breathe Jira, and the more our company that is familiar with it and the processes afforded by it, the better off our company is as a whole,” said Russell Eutsler, IT Analyst at Say Media.

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Even without a formal ROI analysis, Say Media has demonstrated cost savings. Upgrading the standard components of the previous system would have started at $10,000; and there would be substantial additional costs to upgrade the custom coded elements to meet Say Media’s needs.

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Say Media has saved in Salesforce licenses by transitioning some of its 90 active Salesforce users from working within Salesforce (at a cost of approximately $110 per month) to Atlassian Jira, saving thousands of dollars annually.

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Other departments are interested in migrating. Say Media’s engineering department is excited about the possibilities of integrating their second Salesforce instance and connecting Salesforce to existing Jira workflows for other engineering projects. By using the CRM Plugin, the engineering team can focus on the core aspects of the company’s business without worrying about whether the system is being utilized effectively.

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Why Goldfinger?

Say Media has been working with Goldfinger since January 2015, when the company first discovered Goldfinger while searching for Jira/Salesforce integration plugins in the Atlassian Marketplace. Say Media made the decision to purchase Goldfinger’s CRM Plugin after reading many positive four-star reviews in the Atlassian Marketplace and being provided with an initial 30-day free trial license.

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According to Say Media, the top benefits of the CRM Plugin are the flexibility and functionality afforded by the plugin’s ability to map almost anything in Salesforce to corresponding issues and objects in Jira. This allowed Say Media to transition core aspects of its business from an antiquated project management system to Jira, which has improved the collaboration and effectiveness of their teams. In addition, the world-class technical support and willingness of the Goldfinger development team to implement bug fixes and feature requests in a timely manner made choosing Goldfinger a no-brainer.

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“Having an easy to use interface for selecting various fields and objects from Salesforce has given me a better understanding of how Salesforce works under the hood, and we’ve been able to accommodate almost every request from the teams requiring information from Salesforce who prefer to work within Jira for issue and project management. The level of functionality and support provided by the CRM Plugin team has exceeded our expectations,” said Eutsler.