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Scenario 06: SteelForge Industries

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Scenario Snapshot

FieldDetail
Start hereThis question page
DifficultyMedium
IndustryManufacturing
Heavy domainsData and Integration
Recommended prep window150 minutes total: 90 min preparation + 30 min presentation + 30 min Q&A
Coverage availableQuestion + Solution
Study flowAttempt this page first, then review the sibling solution page after your own attempt.

Recommended Approach

Print this scenario. Read it twice using the Two-Pass Reading Method once for understanding and once for implicit requirements. Spend your first 30 minutes reading and extracting requirements, your second 30 on architecture design, and your final 30 on key artifacts.

Project Overview

SteelForge Industries manufactures structural steel components and fabricated assemblies, headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA. It serves the commercial construction, industrial, and infrastructure markets across the continental US. Two production plants (Pittsburgh and Birmingham, AL) feed a centralized distribution warehouse in Columbus, OH.

AttributeDetail
HeadquartersPittsburgh, PA
Employees800 (480 operations, 190 sales and support, 130 corporate)
Annual revenue$220 million
Production plants2 (Pittsburgh, PA; Birmingham, AL)
Active SKUs5,000 across structural, flat, tubular, and specialty product lines
Orders per day140 average, 280 peak (Q1 construction season)
Active dealers200 (regional distributors and specialty fabricators)
Legacy CRM age11 years (on-premise Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0)

The CIO approved a Salesforce program this fiscal year to replace the legacy CRM, connect to SAP ERP, and launch a dealer self-service portal. Go-live is targeted for 14 months from project kickoff.

Stakeholder Quotes

Linda Reyes, VP of Sales: “Two reps called the same dealer on the same day because one account was ‘Pittsburgh Steel Supply’ and another was ‘Pgh Steel & Supply Co.’ I need one clean record per dealer.”

David Okonkwo, CIO: “SAP is staying. Sales must not quote prices that differ from what SAP invoices, and our integration must not hit SAP during the morning order window.”

Maria Santos, Plant Manager, Pittsburgh: “If a dealer orders Monday and we have stock in Pittsburgh but haven’t transferred it to Columbus yet, the system shows zero. Sales calls me to manually check.”

Rick Huang, Dealer Relations Manager: “Larger accounts place 10-15 orders a week by phone and fax. We’ve promised a portal for three years. A dealer in Portland must never see another dealer’s negotiated pricing.”

Current Systems

Legacy CRM (Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0): On-premise, 11 years old, 85 internal users. Holds 1,400 accounts, 12,000 contacts, 6 years of opportunity history. Issues: ~340 suspected duplicate accounts, inconsistent naming, ~30% of contacts missing contact details, no mobile access, no SAP integration.

SAP ERP (S/4HANA 2021): On-premise, Pittsburgh datacenter. System of record for product catalog, inventory (3 storage locations), tier-based pricing, order management, and invoicing. Exposes OData REST APIs. Current CRM “integration” is a nightly CSV export to a shared drive. Peak order window: 7:00-9:00 AM CT.

Logistics Provider (FreightBridge Inc.): Third-party carrier for all outbound shipments. REST API for tracking status, estimated delivery, and proof of delivery. Tracking numbers currently arrive by email and are entered into SAP manually.

Dealer Ordering (No Portal): Orders placed by phone, email, or fax; inside sales enters them into SAP. Average entry lag: 3-4 hours. Manual-entry error rate: ~6%.

Business Requirements

Product Data Model

  1. The product catalog must represent a 3-level hierarchy: Product Family > Product Line > SKU (unique part number, directly orderable).
  2. Each SKU carries a product-line-specific attribute set. Structural products require: grade/specification (e.g., ASTM A36), nominal dimensions, weight per unit length, and surface treatment. Flat and tubular lines have distinct attribute sets. The model must support per-line attributes without a single 200-field flat table.
  3. Pricing (list, promotional, and tier-based contract price for Tier 1/2/3) is mastered in SAP. Salesforce reads and displays pricing from SAP; reps must not have a writable price field.
  4. Inventory availability by storage location (Pittsburgh, Birmingham, Columbus) must reflect SAP data within 15 minutes during business hours. Reps and dealers do not connect to SAP directly.
  5. Product records must support supersession: a discontinued SKU points to its replacement. Searching by old part number surfaces the current one.
  6. SKU lifecycle states: active, discontinued (orderable until stock exhausted), end-of-life (not orderable). End-of-life SKUs must not appear in portal search results.

Data Migration and Quality

  1. All 1,400 legacy CRM accounts must migrate to Salesforce. A deduplication pass must first identify and merge the ~340 suspected duplicates, preserving all linked interactions, contacts, and opportunities.
  2. Deduplication must handle naming variations: abbreviations, punctuation, city/state suffixes, alternate DBA names. Automated matching produces a candidate list; human review is required before any merge is committed.
  3. Contacts missing both email and phone, or with last-activity older than 4 years, must be flagged for review rather than auto-migrated.
  4. Six years of opportunity history must migrate and link to the correct merged account records.
  5. The legacy CRM stays readable (not writable) for 90 days post go-live. Full decommission within 6 months.
  6. All migrated records must carry a source-system field and original record ID for audit and rollback.

Integration Architecture

  1. Salesforce product catalog is populated from SAP. New SKUs must appear within 24 hours; price changes must sync within 4 hours during business hours.
  2. Orders submitted in Salesforce must be created in SAP as the system of record. Salesforce holds an order reference and status only.
  3. Order submission must complete within 30 seconds. If SAP is unreachable, the order queues for retry and the user receives a delayed-submission notification.
  4. SAP order status changes (confirmed, in production, shipped, delivered, invoiced) must reflect in Salesforce within 30 minutes. SAP must not initiate outbound calls to Salesforce.
  5. A nightly batch syncs a full inventory snapshot from SAP as a backstop. If the real-time feed has been down more than 2 hours, Salesforce must display a staleness warning.
  6. The FreightBridge integration polls tracking status every 60 minutes. Status changes to “Out for Delivery” or “Delivered” trigger an automated notification to the dealer contact.
  7. All integration errors must be logged with payload, timestamp, retry count, and resolution status. A daily health report is required showing success rates, error counts, and unresolved messages.

Dealer Portal

  1. All 200 active dealers get access to a self-service portal on Experience Cloud. A dealer principal manages portal users for their own account.
  2. Dealer accounts support parent-child hierarchy. Parent users view orders and invoices across all child locations. Branch users see only their own location.
  3. Dealers browse the active catalog with specifications, availability by storage location, and their tier-based pricing. Other tiers’ pricing and list prices must not be visible.
  4. Dealers place orders through the portal: line items (SKU, quantity, requested delivery date), shipping address from a saved verified list, and PO number. SKU status and availability are validated before submitting to SAP.
  5. Dealers placing 5 or more orders per week (~25 accounts) can upload a CSV order file. The portal validates, previews with line-level errors highlighted, and waits for dealer confirmation before submission.
  6. Dealers view all orders for their account (or child accounts) with SAP status, FreightBridge tracking, and PDF invoice access.
  7. Dealers submit product inquiries and service requests through the portal, creating Cases routed to the dealer support queue. SLA: 4-hour acknowledgment, 2-day resolution.
  8. Phase 1 supports English only. The architecture must not block multi-language in Phase 2.

Reporting

  1. VP of Sales dashboard: 90-day rolling orders, revenue by dealer and tier, order frequency trends, open opportunities, last contact date. Daily refresh.
  2. Inside sales order pipeline: orders by SAP status with aging flags for any order in one status more than 5 business days.
  3. CIO integration health dashboard: SAP sync success rates, order submission latency, FreightBridge poll results, unresolved errors older than 24 hours. Weekly refresh.
  4. Plant manager view (per plant): open orders sourced from their plant with expected ship dates and quantities for production planning.
  5. Executive monthly summary: revenue by product family and dealer tier, new vs. returning dealer mix, YoY comparison. Scheduled PDF email delivery.

Constraints

  • SAP S/4HANA remains the system of record for catalog, pricing, inventory, and orders. Salesforce is not a competing order system.
  • Phase 1 budget covers Sales Cloud, Experience Cloud, and integration middleware. No additional SaaS platforms in scope.
  • Internal IT: two Salesforce admins (no development background) and one integration specialist. A partner SI handles development.
  • The 14-month go-live is fixed. Dealer portal must be live before Q1 construction season (month 15).
  • The legacy CRM is read-only for this project and cannot be modified.
  • Single region, US-only. No data residency or multi-region requirements.

Implicit Requirements

Consider: What does a 3-level catalog with per-line attributes mean for your object model? How do you keep SAP as pricing authority without a writable price field? What does a 30-second order submission SLA require of the integration pattern, and what is your failure strategy when SAP is down at 8 AM? How do you model parent-child account hierarchies so portal users see only their own data? What does 340 suspected duplicates mean for tooling and migration sequencing? How does inventory across 3 storage locations map to Salesforce objects when SAP owns the numbers? How do you link FreightBridge tracking events to the correct dealer order?

Deliverables Checklist

  • System context diagram: all 4 systems with integration flows, direction, and pattern labels
  • Data model: Account hierarchy, 3-level product catalog with per-line attributes, Order reference object, Case
  • Integration design: SAP product sync, real-time availability, order submission, SAP status poll, FreightBridge tracking poll
  • Dealer portal access model: Experience Cloud profile/permission set design, account hierarchy visibility, tier-based pricing isolation
  • Data migration: dedup strategy, merge rules, sequencing, legacy CRM transition period
  • Security model: dealer data isolation, rep visibility scoping, pricing confidentiality
  • Top 3 architecture decisions with trade-offs and at least one rejected alternative each

Time Management: 150-Minute Practice Session

Prep , first 30 min: Read twice: once for context, once to extract explicit requirements and mark implicit ones. Flag the SAP authority constraint, the 30-second order SLA, and the dealer pricing isolation requirement.

Prep , middle 30 min: Draw the system context diagram and data model. Decide on integration patterns for SAP (real-time order + batch sync) and FreightBridge (polling). Settle the dealer portal visibility model and account hierarchy design.

Prep , final 30 min: Document your top three architecture decisions with trade-offs. Flag any open questions you would take back to stakeholders. Complete your deliverables checklist.

Presentation (30 min): Lead with the SAP integration pattern and the dealer portal architecture. Then cover data model, migration strategy, and security model.

Q&A (30 min): Expect probing on the 30-second order submission SLA when SAP is unavailable, how dealer tier pricing is isolated, and how you handle the 340 duplicate accounts without breaking six years of opportunity history.

Ready to Check?

When you’ve completed your own solution, compare with the reference solution.

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This content is study material for CTA exam preparation. Content compiled and presented with AI assistance. Not affiliated with Salesforce.

Personal study notes for the Salesforce CTA exam. Content compiled from VJ's study notes, official Salesforce documentation, community sources, and online publicly available content, then organized and presented with AI assistance. Not affiliated with Salesforce. © 2025–2026 VJ Srivastava.