SaaS integration involves connecting the application with customers’ existing systems and third-party services for them to be useful to the end-user. These integrations are especially important for data exchange between the application and other systems. Integrations include a range of a variety of premise-to-cloud and cloud-to-cloud integrations.
Integrations are a way to make sure a new SaaS product orchestrates and optimizes workflows to provide overall business value for the customers.
Why it’s important
Integration with existing systems is the best way to increase the usability and stickiness of your offering to the customer. It provides a comprehensive offering thereby accelerating product adoption and makes it harder to abandon or replace, thereby increasing the lifetime and CLV of the product.
Best practices
- For integrations during onboarding, you need to go beyond the understanding of your product and understand the upstream and downstream workflows, the functions involved, and the business context and objectives. Make sure that you factor in enough time for this during scoping. Keep a ready reckoner of recommended workflows for similar groups of customers.
- Recommend low-scope integrations with limited features and functionality for initial go-lives with advanced/edge cases in subsequent sprints.
- For comprehensive integrations, have an expectations-management session specially focused on the responsibilities of your team, the customer, and any third-party vendors. Outline and document these for visibility and accountability.
- Make demos a part of the integration phase to ensure that the right workflows are being set up and data quality is being maintained. We recommend a data cleansing/data management initiative at the customer end before proceeding further into the project.
- Ensure the customer understands their role in testing in terms of the testing environment, approvals, sample data, and acceptance testing.
