How an equipment rental business can benefit by implementing MuleSoft?

Why does a rental company need MuleSoft solutions?

The company is an equipment and employee rental business based in the Netherlands. It is one of the biggest rental companies with many clients, equipment units, and employees around Europe.
Making equipment, service, and expertise available to everyone in the easiest way possible is what the company stands for. There is no need to possess your equipment; use it only when the occasion calls for it.
The company has several thousand employees and hundreds of stores in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and other European countries. It offers an opportunity to rent over 2,500 machines and tools from top brands. The staff is ready to provide detailed instructions. Some devices also come with a manual.
Following its mission, the company aims to cover more European markets and advance its service to the highest level. This goal requires great integration efforts.

Main challenges of MuleSoft implementation

Currently, the company is going through a transformation. It wants to expand its business processes and digital ecosystem. To do so, they need proper architectural solutions to integrate different services and tools that would connect data from several countries.
The company decided to go for integration using a low code or no code solution instead of developing custom code, and for that reason chose MuleSoft.
The great challenge is to find a professional MuleSoft team. The market offers few experts with proper knowledge of complex solutions built upon multiple constant data transmission systems.
The key is to choose an appropriate tool for integrating the business system containing different interfaces (turning 5-10 other systems into a single interface) and receiving data from 5-10 other systems (website, databases, Salesforce).
Another challenge is database access using only VPN or local Wi-Fi. With MuleSoft, this is not an issue. The system also needs scalability to expand to new markets and countries.

How is the MuleSoft implementation conducted?

The main goal is to link different systems into one structure with a single way of accessing data instead of several different ones. That means ensuring accessible communication within the systems, databases, websites, and web applications. In this case, a standard data model (CDM) is appropriate. All micro-services and other integration parts would use the same data model for communication. The MuleSoft implementation is not the only part of the project, as there are a lot of micro-services, such as data about users, data about the order, etc., and no matter where the data comes from, MuleSoft should bring it to one place.

A standard set of procedures during the implementation process includes:

1. Receiving access to the system and all necessary credentials;
2. Taking time to figure out how to import and export data from it;
3. Setting up the task of what to do with the data.

One of the most significant challenges here is that you can make a great integration, but it might experience user overload. Thus, the main task is to make integration that will work quickly in real-time with many users/data. For this reason, each integration goes through stress tests after it is developed.

The three levels of MuleSoft integration

There are several integration levels:

• Experience level;
• Process level;
• System-level.

At the System level, the data comes from the source system directly. Three different systems could be accessed simultaneously on the Process level, saving significant time. The chain goes like this: Salesforce data – MuleSoft – Database. Every system can access all the data. So, MuleSoft should also create a unique Experience level application if a new system needs to access the data. Salesforce integration and the website added extra value for the client.

What makes a MuleSoft team?

The team consists of the Nextview architect (with more than 20 years of experience with integrations), two solution designers responsible for all integrations, and five developers, with expertise in Salesforce. They are also responsible for business analytics. The team has started the implementation and continues to work on the project, adding something new. It is required due to the sheer amount of different systems and databases.

How long does it take to implement MuleSoft?

The length of project implementation is based on whether the client knows what they need. If the integration is easy, MuleSoft is the best possible option. If there are two or more systems, the client needs to estimate and decide which method is the priority. MuleSoft, in its turn, becomes the “glue” in between different systems and can support a lot of integrations.

What are the key results of MuleSoft implementation?

The unique interface provides access to all data. It's also possible to create it from scratch on the server. Since MuleSoft is cloud-based, so you don't need any on-premise servers. You can easily add more calculating modules and purchase extra features. The solution gets ready in several weeks. The client chose MuleSoft after they started working with Salesforce since it’s easier to add a new system afterward. Also, the company can quickly scale it. In such cases, key measurements usually include the number of users and data volume.

Taking this into account, MuleSoft offers several advantages:

• Amount of data;
• Number of systems;
• Scalability (The company could purchase more services and computing power);
• No need for extra administrators;
• MuleSoft Anypoint Exchange has many free connectors for almost any widespread system (Salesforce, SAP, Azure, AWS).

So when a contact is made on Salesforce, it ends up in the database. That’s very efficient, especially during the website application development when Salesforce data from different sources is needed. The built system becomes available with MuleSoft, which has all the keys to all databases, and its credentials could replace multiple passwords.