When’s the right time to build integrations into your B2B SaaS?
When is it worth the investment of developer resources, money, and time that’s needed to do it right?
It’s a big decision, but we’re here to help you figure it out.
This guide will walk you through 6 clear signs that it’s time to put your integration plan into action. By the end, you’ll know if now is the time, or if you should hold off a little longer.
Now, onto the list.
Are people asking for integrations?
Is your sales team fielding questions like, “Does it integrate with Salesforce?” “Can I sync it with Shopify?”
Or do you see customers posting requests to forums, Discord chats, or customer service channels? “I’d really like to connect this app to … but I don’t know how…”
If you’re not sure whether your customers want integrations or not, another easy way to get data is by conducting customer surveys. In other words, just ask them!
SportsTech platform LeagueApps faced this exact situation when customers started to ask for integrations. Building those crucial integrations helped them to rise up as a leader in the SportsTech industry, where tech integrations aren’t as common.
This is the best reason to start building integrations. They fill a clear customer need and make your users happy by allowing them to seamlessly integrate their tools together. Your app will increase in value for your customers, and once it’s part of their workflow, you’ll see less customer churn.
What’s happening in the rest of the market?
If competing apps are offering integrations that your customers want, you risk falling behind. Once you’ve got your app off the ground, you really can’t wait to match the integrations your competitors have (and ideally go above and beyond them).
Data from a study by Paragon showed that integrations are a deciding factor in sales deals 60% of the time. And you don’t want another app claiming such a huge chunk of the market.
Fintech SaaS Vestwell noticed that more and more fintech companies were preparing for integrations, even though the industry has been slower to adopt new tech. They moved fast to create the right infrastructure to support these new partners, which helped them create more strategic relationships.
Another signal to pay attention to is when a new app starts to gain popularity with your customer base. If the up-and-coming app complements yours, it’ll pay off to add that integration early and stay ahead of the curve.
Does your company have plans to build strategic tech partnerships as part of a partner-led or ecosystem-led growth strategy?
Building a tech partnership program takes time, but creating integrations with potential partners can help spark the relationship faster. According to our review of the top 50 SaaS partner programs, 76% of programs require a published integration before you can join.
No matter where your company is headed, it’s helpful to understand its wider strategic goals and determine whether integrations could help make them a reality.
Of course, any decisions you make about products should also align with your roadmap and long-term vision. If you know what your customers are looking for, you’ll be able to guide those decisions to make sure that new integrations fill the real-life needs of your customer base.
Will adding a certain integration greatly improve your user experience?
Any uptick in user experience is a plus for your users, which means less churn, more positive sentiment around your brand, and more word-of-mouth marketing for your app.
The question is, does the potential improvement in user experience outweigh the cost of the integration? Again, you can look at your customer comments, call data, and survey data to see what problems people feel most strongly about.
And if a competitor has already solved your user experience problem, it’s even more crucial that you implement it to stay competitive in your market.
That said, the type of integration you create can make or break your user experience.
Using a low-code iPaaS solution can make it harder for your users to set up integrations, and you won’t be able to cover every use case. That’s why we recommend developing native integrations, which give your customers a much better experience.
Do you see opportunities to conduct co-sales or co-marketing campaigns with other tech partners in your space?
Once your apps are integrated, you can cross-promote each others’ products by hosting webinars, creating case studies and guides, or running live events to bring your audiences together and show them how to use your solutions to reach their goals.
Not only that, but simply having an integration with a leading app in your industry can boost your exposure, get you more search traffic, and boost your credibility for new users.
One Series B SaaS won preferred integration status on a larger app’s marketplace because of the quality of its integration.
Ask your marketing and sales team which tech partners they’d like to collaborate with. You might be surprised at what you discover.
Learn more about co-marketing campaigns in our guide to marketing integrations.
Do you have the tools, resources, and expertise to build and maintain a high-quality integration?
Right now, you may not think so. After all, developing native integrations takes plenty of time, developer resources, and thousands of dollars per integration.
That’s why many SaaS companies turn to simple iPaaS platforms that promise to create integrations quickly with drag-and-drop interfaces and small amounts of code.
The problem with those solutions is that they bloat your code, they come with built-in limitations, and you don’t have control over the integration. Any problem that happens must be taken up with the iPaaS support team, which can lead to delays for your customers.
That’s why at Pandium, we’ve built a code-first integration platform that provides you with the tools and resources you need to develop custom-coded native integrations without starting from scratch every time.
We provide code templates, fully customizable pre-built connectors for hundreds of apps, and a skilled development team to help you when needed. We also help you maintain and troubleshoot integrations, plus give you a white-listed public gallery and in-app marketplace to display integrations inside your app and on your website.
We save our customers an average of six figures per integration, and they use our tools to help junior developers create new integrations in as little as a week.
Check out ShipBob’s case study, where we cut down development time by 500%, saved them $200K in infrastructure costs, and helped them win 4.5x more partners through integrations.
In other words, with Pandium, you now have the tools and resources needed to build high-quality native integrations that can launch your app into the next stage of growth.
After learning the signals, what’s your assessment of the situation? Is it the right time to build integrations into your app, or should it wait for a future date?
If you’re ready to explore your options for creating fully custom-coded integrations in less time with Pandium, sign up for a free demo with us today.
