How Important Are Integrations for SaaS Vendors?

To say ‘very’ would be an understatement in answer to the question that how important are integrations for SaaS vendors. Especially if you consider the fact that the market is getting all the more competitive with each passing day as new vendors are turning up sporadically with cutting-edge innovations to offer. Suffice it to say, to achieve speed-to-market, a SaaS vendor will need to do much more than just offer a single solution.

For example, a SaaS vendor for a real-estate niche-specific CRM will need to provide users with everything they would need, rather than just a stylish dashboard to accept payments and invoices.

Otherwise, there’s no stopping them from going for a vendor who’s willing to provide them with integrations that allow users to solve multiple problems through a single platform that offers several solutions.

Why do SaaS Vendors Need Integrations?

Whether your target audience consists of B2B or B2C clients, you can be sure that your competition will leave you in the dust if you’re not providing integrations. Think of integrations as multi-faceted solutions to multiple and complex problems.

For businesses, this could mean incorporating several different apps to streamline business and marketing operations. Whereas, for the end customers, this could be the privilege of being able to pay via their preferred gateways, connect your SaaS with services or platforms of their own, etc.

Here are some highlights of why SaaS vendors need to offer integrations with their software:

Market Competition

The key motivation for SaaS vendors to offer integrations is none other than the market itself. Since there’s almost no problem left for businesses and end customers that don’t have an online cloud-based solution, the only way to distinguish yourself is to maximise the customizability and scalability of your SaaS product or services.

Inevitably, that is the only way competitors are setting themselves apart from the herd and establishing a monopoly in this era of cutthroat competition.

While some are targeting RevOps and SalesOps, others are catering to human resource and project lifecycle management solutions.

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Whereas, the ones on top are offering all-in-one integrated solutions such as state of the art subscription management platforms that offer multiple features such as recurring billing platform for SaaS, integrated marketing tools like HubSpot and MailChimp along with several payment gateway integrations to access the global market.

In a nutshell, it’s high time for SaaS vendors to pick up the pace and make their software a multi-channel platform offering several features and functions integrated as one.

Interconnectivity

As per a study, businesses that have 200-500 employees use more than 120 apps collectively. And almost all of these apps are used by certain departments to generate data that can be required by others.

Integrations allow multiple apps and software to connect with each other on a single cloud-based platform, making it possible for several apps to work with each other to provide a coherent end-user experience.

For example, by integrating a CRM with marketing tools like HubSpot can help you identify buyer personas and chase down relevant leads more easily.

This is because integrations allow apps to share data with each other and analyze them to provide you with key insights that can further help you streamline your marketing operations.

Automation

Once integrated, multiple APIs can be programmed to communicate with each other and carry out several tasks at once. This helps a single platform complete several tasks and since it’s coded, you can develop an algorithm to automate everything as well. With smart technology like embedded integrations, this can be done with just a few clicks.

Compared to traditional switching between apps, CIOs and executives report that having a single platform reporting on every aspect of your organization’s operations helps save time and resources.

As per a study, employees report that almost 32 precious days a year are wasted in the process of switching between apps.

Not to mention that the multi-faceted nature of the task itself can result in frustration, as employees report that switching between apps also makes it hard to remember the task you’re trying to accomplish.

AI-Based Integrated Systems

Artificial intelligence is the future and this statement is ever so true for SaaS vendors who are thinking of offering integrations.

Though not as advanced as one might assume, artificial intelligence is evolving at a rapid pace, and for SaaS vendors, AI-integrated apps can do much more than just streamline operations and report MRR, ARR, and customer behaviour.

In fact, AI system integration can play a vital role in providing you with key business analytics that can drastically reduce your CAC, drive more convertible traffic and decrease customer churn.

With AI, your subscription-based business solutions can work to perform multiple tasks such as streamlining communication and identifying key phrases in the buyer’s journey by analyzing event data to reach out with ready-to-use sales templates.

Common Integration Problems and Solutions for SaaS Vendors

Now that we know how important integrations are for SaaS vendors, let’s take a look at the common problems you can face when trying out integrations:

Misidentification of Needs

When you realize that the possibilities are endless and that you can have any number of integrations you want, it becomes difficult to decide what to go for.

For example, a retailer on Shopify would want Stripe, MailChimp, HubSpot, and many other integrations that are inevitably important and crucial for various business operations.

However, we all know that integrations can take a lot of time, and thus, you can’t afford to misidentify your needs. It’s true that you need several applications for various departments but if you don’t prioritize according to your scalability, you’re going to bite off more than you can chew.

Deadlines and Time Constraints

Unless you’re having certified partners do it for you, integrations can take time. Moreover, ensuring that your APIs are working together flawlessly is not just time-taking and frustrating, but it’s also crucial as well. Even though everyone opts for integrations because of their quick and easy-to-install nature, there’s no denying that the process can entail difficulties if you’re having your own developers do it for the first time.

That is to say, you don’t want your billing and marketing APIs to provide wrong data to each other, resulting in a chaotic flow of misinformation that can even send wrong data to your customers should you have a CRM integrated in the mix.

This is why you should have an extensive ETA for integrating your apps and rather than doing it all at once, make the smart decision and integrate one app at a time.

Improper Integrations

Improper integrations can result in devastating crises that can result in reduced morale, unbearable frustration and loss of a significant amount of time.

If your in-house developers don’t have hands-on experience with the concept, it’s best to hire certified partners of the product you’re looking to add in order to have the most seamless integration experience possible.

The fact that you can lose revenue and leads conversions if your integrations aren’t properly functional is more than enough to highlight their importance.

Integrate, Innovate and Automate

This is the mantra for SaaS vendors in 2022 as integrations pave the way for automating all business processes and providing the perfect user experience.

If you’re ready to streamline your operations and provide your customers with everything in one billing platform for SaaS, contact SubscriptionFlow to evolve your existing infrastructure CRM into an all-in-one platform for all your business operations.