Why out-of-the-box SaaS integrations are holding your business back

It’s time to rethink what SaaS integration really means. In our experience, bespoke integrations offer significantly more value, not just technically, but strategically. Done right, they foster growth, reduce risk, and unlock innovation. For businesses using SaaS tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Monday.com, connecting these systems to your digital products isn’t optional; it’s business-critical. Without it, you’re left with work duplication, spiralling operational costs, and growing data silos. XPLM found that 76% of businesses say data silos negatively impact collaboration, with a further 74% viewing them as a competitive disadvantage.

There are essentially three ways to approach integrating your SaaS systems with your website, portal, or app: out-of-the-box, which uses a system’s pre-built features; standard API integration, which takes the SaaS system’s own API and allows you to connect it to your digital products; or the advanced bespoke integration route, which is completely custom and unique to your business and its needs.

We’re advocates of going down the advanced bespoke integration route for a few reasons. Let’s break down how going bespoke could benefit your business and its workflows.

If updating data in multiple places is something you’re familiar with, then an advanced integration could cut down on your admin tasks. Using our own middleware, we can get your SaaS systems to speak to one another for super smooth data flows. This means you’ll only need to update your data in one place, rather than four or five places. This not only cuts back on tedious admin time, but it also means you’ll be able to rely on your data more because there’s less chance of human error when inputting the data.

By cutting back on this sort of admin, you could free up members of your team to focus on more important tasks, like following up on valuable leads.

Advanced integrations can help your business to cut back on costs, too. The key contributor to this comes from the reduction of manual work, which in turn results in lower labour costs. Thanks to automations, tasks like data entry, reporting, and invoicing can be heavily reduced. But the cost savings don’t stop there. You could end up needing fewer software licences if you can consolidate some of your SaaS systems when integrating. Or you can potentially cut back on costly errors caused by manual data entry, which cost both time and money. And you can boost customer retention thanks to an improved customer experience via streamlined support and invoicing, reducing your customer churn rate.

So integrating can cut costs in various ways across the board for your company, giving you more money to use elsewhere to promote business growth and development.

Plug-and-play integrations seem convenient and quick to implement at first glance because they’re designed and built for the masses, not your business needs. They usually come with pre-defined functionality and (more often than not) poor design and UX, so you’ll find it difficult to tailor them to your workflows, customer journeys, or user experience. This will result in a disconnect between your digital products. Your CRM, website, and internal systems may speak to one another, but they won’t truly ‘talk’ to one another because they’re not aligned or efficient.

Let’s look at an example. You may want to trigger a personalised onboarding sequence when a user signs up to your website, which pulls in data from various SaaS platforms. But, your out-of-the-box integration doesn’t have the functionality for custom data fields, so you get stuck with a watered-down version of what you really need.

Even if you decide to use a SaaS platform’s native API, you’ll have your wings clipped by the API’s scope. Some data endpoints might be read-only, batch processes can be delayed, or some features just aren’t available via the API. So you’ll technically have a connected system, but the flexibility and customisation of what you can achieve is limited.

Bespoke integrations are designed and built entirely around your business and its workflows. From the way your business operates, to what your customers and users expect, to the efficiencies you want to gain by integrating. You get complete control over how the integration functions, the design, and the logic behind it to bring together your systems to work in harmony.

Want to sync your customer data in real-time between your website, CRM, and ERP with custom field mapping? Or pull data from a third-party system to dynamically display pricing in your customer portal? It’s all possible with an advanced integration.

Beyond the functionality benefits, a bespoke integration is built to be robust and scalable, so it grows with your business. You won’t need to rely on temporary workarounds or third-party plugins that might break; you’re investing in a long term digital solution.

Automation is probably one of the key features of an SaaS integration. It underpins the whole idea of integrating your systems. Being able to automate some of your business’s processes can save your team valuable time. Automations allow your data to move instantly between your SaaS systems and your digital products. So you’ll not need to wait for overnight exports or manual updates. You’re always working with live information. Forget having to sync that data; your integration does that now. Kerr Consulting found that many businesses say they save around 40% of their time by automating routine tasks through SaaS integrations with their digital products.

Because bespoke integrations are built around you and your customers, we can create a seamless and personalised user experience on your website. Whether that’s real-time account information, customised dashboards that dynamically pull in live data, or live product availability, the possibilities are endless, and all a great way to give your users the best possible experience.

This also helps cement a strong relationship with customers because you set yourselves apart from competitors who lag behind in these user experience areas.

We build our advanced bespoke integrations using our Si Middleware—our flexible connection hub that sits between your SaaS systems and your website, portal, or app. Thanks to its flexibility, we can scale up your integrations as your business grows. So, if your business decides to start using a Digital Asset Management system like Bynder, or you introduce a new CRM system like Monday.com, we can link those up to your digital products with ease, so your data keeps flowing without interruption, and you can streamline your workflows.

Or, if you need to scale down because you’ve moved data across to one of your other SaaS systems, our Si Middleware allows for that too. So your SaaS systems are always flexing with your business.

Our advanced SaaS integrations are proven to save businesses time and money. Just take a look at our case studies, like Harwin. They’ve seen incredible results for both them and their customers.

If you’re ready to move beyond disjointed SaaS tools and start scaling your business, get in touch for a free integration consultation.