Recently I’ve been having many conversations with partnership experts and B2B SaaS companies that are considering building integrations, as a way to drive increased revenue for their organizations. Throughout these discussions, there is a consistent theme of misalignment that is slowing down progress, and hindering companies from realizing the revenue increases that companies see when they prioritize integrations. Despite their proven ability to enhance customer retention, increase lifetime value, and drive revenue, integrations are often misunderstood within organizations.
A shift in perspective is required to address this disconnect, emphasizing that integrations are no longer a "nice-to-have" but a core component of business success.
According to the 2024 State of Integrations Report, integrations are brought up in 60% of sales conversations, and 92% of companies say that customers with active integrations are less likely to churn. Ensuring all teams within an organization are aligned on the impact integrations will have on revenue generation and retention is critical.
At its core, the issue stems from siloed thinking within organizations. GTM teams who are responsible for partnerships, customer success, sales, and marketing, often see integrations as essential for customer acquisition and retention. Meanwhile, product and engineering teams focus is on building core product features, with technical partnerships falling outside of their team. There is often a person within the organization that has been handed the responsibility of technical partnerships, but often they don’t have direct access to the development resources they need to build the integrations. Without alignment across all teams, there are often stalled efforts to get the integrations built.
Without adequate resources, the people responsible for technology partnerships often turn to low or no-code tools to try and get integrations built without using dev resources. However they quickly run into problems with this approach, often realizing that they can only create very basic integrations that don’t scale. Organizations that have successfully aligned their internal teams around the value of integrations, often avoid wasting resources on inadequate solutions, in addition to realizing the increased revenue opportunities that come with a robust integration strategy.
Several factors contribute to this persistent gap between GTM and product teams:
To bridge this gap, companies must adopt a customer-centric approach and foster cross-functional collaboration. Here are some steps to creating a robust integration strategy:
Instead of building ecosystems around the product, create an ecosystem map that has the customer at the center. You can do this by mapping out the tools customers use on a daily basis and identifying integration opportunities that simplify their workflows. For example if your customers are operations managers at medium-sized retail companies, look at what other software they use on a daily basis. Take some time to understand their workflows - are they downloading csv files to upload to another system? Do they often do duplicate data entry? By understanding these workflows and having a customer-centric view of their ecosystem, you can more easily identify what integrations would be of value to them.
Organizations aren’t always great at tracking the impact of integrations, however the ones that do are easily able to see the impact, and quickly realize the exponential impact when customers go from using one integration to three integrations, to ten or more integrations. By implementing systems to monitor how customers use integrations and analyze patterns among top-performing accounts, organizations can understand which third-party tools drive retention and upsell opportunities. Some examples of the types of things you can start to measure are:
By tracking this data consistently over time, you can start to build a robust and quantifiable prioritization schedule for building integrations.
Align GTM, product, and engineering teams around shared goals such as customer retention and lifetime value (LTV). Consider organizational changes where technology partnerships report directly to product leadership so that integrations get the attention they deserve, and adequate resources are assigned. By embedding technology partnerships within the product and engineering teams, there is a better chance for all teams to see the value integrations bring, and to start treating integrations in the same way new features are treated.
Many organizations have feedback processes where GTM teams can share insights with product teams. If integrations are included as a specific talking point or agenda item in these meetings, the value of integrations can be shared across all teams in the company. Within these meetings, teams can share and review the data that has been collected on integration usage, as well as more detailed insights about customer requests and use cases. Product teams can also share the details around integration complexities and priorities, to ensure that GTM teams are also able to understand (and relate back to customers) things like integration roadmaps and integration complexities.
User interviews are a great way to uncover pain points in manual workflows that could be solved through automation or integration. For example, if customers frequently export CSV files for manual data manipulation, an integration could save time and improve satisfaction. By understanding the specifics of how customers are working on a day to day basis, product teams can more easily see how integrations can remove friction and increase adoption of their own product. Customer advisory boards that include system integrators or agencies representing multiple clients, can also be a great way to get customer insights from a wider range of sources, as these types of people can give a perspective that includes a much higher number of customer voices .
Assigning potential revenue or retention value to each integration during planning stages helps to prioritize high-impact projects. It also ensures that everyone in the company is clear on the value of the integrations and why they should be a high priority.
Companies that successfully align their GTM and product teams around integrations stand to gain significant benefits:
Integrations have evolved from being table stakes to becoming necessities for customer success. Successful B2B SaaS companies have embraced this reality by making partnerships and integrations central to their go-to-market strategy from day one—an approach that has paid off in both customer satisfaction and business growth.
The misalignment between teams on the importance of integrations is a critical issue that B2B SaaS companies can no longer afford to ignore. By adopting a customer-first mindset, tracking integration usage, fostering cross-team collaboration, and quantifying ROI, companies can unlock significant growth opportunities while strengthening their competitive edge.
