Migrate from Drivecentric to Salesforce Sales Cloud

DriveCentric Contact maps directly to Salesforce Contact. Every Salesforce Contact requires an AccountId — DriveCentric contacts without a primary company attached are linked to a default Account in Salesforce, or routed to a Lead record based on their lifecycle stage designation. Email serves as the primary deduplication key during the contact load phase to prevent duplicate records from being created.

DriveCentric leads with 'Prospect' or 'Unqualified' status map directly to Salesforce Lead records. Leads that have progressed to 'Customer' status in DriveCentric route to Salesforce Contact instead of Lead, using email as the de-duplication key to match against existing Contact records. This routing logic is applied during the transformation phase before records are inserted into Salesforce.

DriveCentric Company (the dealership entity) maps to Salesforce Account. Address, industry, website, and employee count fields map directly without transformation. For multi-rooftop setups with parent-child dealership relationships, we use Salesforce's parent-Account hierarchy — the migration plan builds the complete Account tree in hierarchy depth order so parent IDs are available for child records.

DriveCentric Deals map to Salesforce Opportunities. Every automotive-specific field (stock number, F&I product flags, trade-in value, OEM certification status) becomes a custom Opportunity__c field. These fields are created in Salesforce Object Manager before any deal records load. Stage names are mapped via value-mapping against Salesforce's stage pick-list, with pick-list values scoped per record type.

Each DriveCentric pipeline maps to a Salesforce Sales Process keyed by Record Type. One pipeline equals one Salesforce Record Type so stage pick-list values are scoped correctly to each pipeline. If DriveCentric uses a single pipeline, a single 'Automotive Sales' record type suffices. Stage probabilities and forecast categories are re-applied from Salesforce's stage configuration during mapping.

DriveCentric calls and emails become Salesforce Tasks with Type='Call' or Type='Email'. Meetings become Events with original start and end times preserved. Notes migrate as Salesforce Notes attached to the parent Contact or Account. Owner assignment and original timestamp are preserved on all three object types to maintain complete activity history in Salesforce.

Salesforce has no native vehicle stock number field. We create Vehicle_Stock_Number__c (Text, 20 characters) on the Opportunity object before loading any deal records. The data type and maximum length are confirmed against the DriveCentric export field definition. This field is added to the relevant page layouts and field-level security is configured for all profiles before the deal load begins.

F&I product flags stored as DriveCentric deal properties map to a custom pick-list field (F_I_Product__c) on the Opportunity object. When dealerships require per-product revenue tracking with pricing and quantities, multiple F&I products per deal may require OpportunityLineItems (Salesforce Products) rather than a single pick-list field. The appropriate approach is determined during the discovery phase.

DriveCentric OEM program certifications (FordDirect, GM, Toyota Certified, etc.) store as boolean or pick-list values. These map to OEM_Certification__c (pick-list) on the Opportunity object in Salesforce. OEM-specific reporting uses this field as a grouping dimension, allowing dealerships to filter pipeline and revenue reports by certification program across their Salesforce instance.

Trade-in vehicle value stored in DriveCentric maps to Trade_In_Value__c (Currency) on the Opportunity object. This is not a native Salesforce field — it is created in Object Manager as part of the automotive schema package. Field-level security is set to Visible for all relevant profiles, and the field is added to the Opportunity page layout before deal records load.

DriveCentric owner email addresses resolve to Salesforce User records by email lookup. Unmatched owners are flagged before migration begins — the team either provisions the corresponding Salesforce user first or reassigns those records to a designated fallback owner before the load. No records insert without a resolvable OwnerId in Salesforce.

DriveCentric file attachments re-upload to Salesforce Files using the ContentDocument and ContentVersion objects. Salesforce's default file size limit is 25MB per file; files exceeding this limit are chunked into multiple uploads. Inline images embedded in DriveCentric notes are extracted, downloaded locally, and re-hosted as Salesforce Files attached to the corresponding record.

DriveCentric workflows, lead-routing rules, and automation sequences have no direct Salesforce equivalent. We export all workflow definitions as a structured JSON reference document that your Salesforce admin uses as a rebuild specification for Salesforce Flow. This documentation step captures the logic and conditions from DriveCentric automations so they can be reconstructed in Salesforce — it is a configuration activity, not a data migration step.

DriveCentric DMS integration settings, including Certified Dealer integrations, CDK Global, Reynolds & Reynolds, and Dealertrack configurations, are source-system specific. These settings cannot transfer to Salesforce because Salesforce DMS integrations are separate platform configurations. We document the current integration endpoints, field mappings, and authentication credentials as part of the discovery package for your integration team to rebuild.