The challenge
The vendor's product portfolio spans CPQ, CLM and a growing AI platform, with enterprise customers running data across two major CRMs and the vendor's own cloud platform. Keeping that data consistent, synchronized, migrated and eventually available without copying, is a platform-level engineering problem, not a services problem.
They needed an engineering partner who could move from proposal to working MVP quickly.
What we did
- Authored an integration-layer program proposal for the executive team, then reworked it with R&D counterparts into a milestone-based structure designed to reach an MVP fast, with user-story-mapping sessions driving scope
- Structured the engagement as a standalone R&D workstream with staggered team ramp-up, milestone-based delivery and invoicing on milestone acceptance
- Evaluated integration architecture options for a CRM-to-CLM connector, comparing an iPaaS approach against cloud-native integration services, and recommended a pragmatic hybrid transition path with a discovery-phase statement of work
- Brought delivery experience from the event-driven side of the platform (Kafka-based event architecture, platform foundation work) into the integration design
Results
- A signed, standalone R&D engagement with the product organization: a services relationship that graduated into platform co-engineering
- A milestone plan aimed at a fast MVP rather than a long specification phase
- Architecture recommendations that avoided vendor lock-in on the connector strategy
Why it matters
Complex data integration is where consulting engagements usually stall: too much architecture, too little shipped. Milestones, story mapping with the client's engineers, MVP first: that is how Salt Square approaches platform R&D for every client.
Tech
Kafka and event-driven architecture, Azure integration services, iPaaS (evaluated), Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce