Blog: Embedded Integration Accelerates SaaS Operations, Improves Customer Experience

For SaaS companies, maintaining an efficient operational flow isn’t something that happens overnight. Those companies with legacy and disparate communication tools are often unable to efficiently take on new customers and even struggle to keep those they already have.

Being able to integrate with customers quickly and efficiently is something that companies cannot afford to put aside; it is simply mandatory for success. Transferring data to and from customers is crucial for SaaS companies, and that means the ability to support the multiple protocols and connectors that a trading partner or customer has also is crucial.

SaaS companies require a platform that is elastic and scalable to enable the secure exchange of data with trading partners and customers, no matter the data size or what protocol is required. Unfortunately, for those SaaS companies without a single, modernized integration platform in place, there are many challenges to overcome.

Here’s how embedded integration technology helps SaaS organizations accelerate their operations and improve the experiences of their customers.

SaaS Company Challenges

There is an impactful cause and effect when SaaS companies don’t have a sustainable operational flow in place to efficiently get critical data into and out of their ecosystems. But the very nature of a SaaS company means integrating its cloud-based service with other customers’ cloud and on-premise systems is critical.

The SaaS integration challenges include:

Complex Customer Integrations

When SaaS companies use a variety of siloed one-off tools to integrate their customers and partners as well as their disparate on-premise and cloud data sources, systems, and applications, they spend too much time managing data integration processes rather than delivering value and results to customers. Such an integration approach limits a cloud company’s ability to scale and handle peak demands.

Inefficient Onboarding

Customers want to connect to SaaS vendors quickly to start doing business immediately, and vendors who make them suffer through a slow, complex onboarding process are starting the relationships off on the wrong foot. Customers expect a certain time to value (and thus, revenue), and SaaS companies who are unable to deliver their solutions quickly and reliably will lose potential customers and, in due time, their current customers.

Unmanageable Costs

Many SaaS vendors rely on their own internal developers to build out custom integrations, which requires developers and very specific (and very expensive) skillsets, and that approach inevitably grows into an unending cycle of costly and arduous headaches.

Moving Security Targets

Security standards are constantly evolving, and those standards vary depending on the industry. But as a SaaS company, you may have customers across industries who must adhere to a slew of security mandates, which often include supporting SHA-2, TLS 2.0, and other advanced encryption methods.

Embedded Integration Improves Business Operations

Embedded integration technology helps meet these challenges head-on and enable a more agile and capable SaaS operation, one that can sufficiently support its customers.

An embedded integration platform allows SaaS companies to deliver better value to their customers by automating complicated integrations. When SaaS companies must integrate a wide portfolio of trading partners and customers, an embedded integration solution connects those systems together, whether on-premise or in the cloud.

From onboarding your trading partners and customers to improving the way you communicate, embedded integration helps streamline your integration workflows across the board, so your IT department can spend time focusing on core business initiatives that create value.

With the right kind of embedded solution in place, SaaS companies gain a single platform that promotes the kind of automation, visibility, and end-to-end data processing enables them to extend integration to their customers, which improves their experiences with you and helps them gain a leg up on the competition.

What to Look For

Once you’ve made the decision to upgrade your legacy and disparate environment to turn to a single, embedded integrated solution, what should you be looking for? There are three primary things to recognize:

1. Choose a true cloud integration platform, to ensure that it integrates seamlessly into your SaaS solution.
2. Choose a complete, out-of-the-box solution, so you don’t have to write a ton of code to support and integrate end-to-end business processes.
3. Choose to say “yes” to customers, which means you have the robust B2B and application integration flexibility to meet any customer requirement.

Once you’ve established your embedded integration solution, you will find how much easier it is to integrate new trading partners and customers and handle the ever-changing demands of business today.

Not convinced? Read a white paper on “What Every SaaS Company Should Know About Integrating with Its Customers” and learn more about how cloud services companies are using modern integration technology to improve their SaaS offerings.