SaaS integration - what is it and why does your business need it?

SaaS is quite a fancy term and it’s very common to hear entrepreneurs and business owners talk about it - in social media groups, communities, webinars, and wherever else they hang out.

But, what exactly is SaaS integration and why does your business need it so badly?

This is a complete guide to SaaS integration. We shall start with understanding what is SaaS integration and later understand why your business needs it.

What is SaaS Integration?

SaaS integration, at its simplest, is the integration of SaaS applications. When you connect two or more SaaS applications, you say that you have integrated them.

For instance, if you have connected Trello with a Google Sheet so that whenever there is a new entry in the Google Sheet - a Trello card gets automatically created, you say that you have integrated two SaaS products.

Likewise, if you have connected your CRM to your email marketing software, you say that you have connected two SaaS products.

Now that we have a context and basic understanding of what is SaaS integration let’s move ahead and see what are the benefits of SaaS integration.

Benefits of SaaS Integration

SaaS integration can be a real game-changer for businesses. Wondering how? Read ahead!

Saves Time

When you connect multiple SaaS applications, you remove a lot from your plate.

Let’s take a look at a very nice example here.

Suppose you are collecting responses from a Typeform using a Google Sheet. For this, you would have to integrate Typeform with Google Sheets.

If this doesn’t sound good, you may integrate Typeform with Trello to collect responses as Trello cards.

Isn’t that nice? So, how did it help save time?

Using these integrations, you won’t have to manually update any Trello boards or Google Sheets. All you have to do is set up the integration and you are sorted.

This is how SaaS integration helps save your time.

No Need to Switch Between Various Apps

SaaS integration prevents you from switching between applications time and again.

This lets you focus more on the task at hand rather than wondering if you are copying the data accurately or not. For example, if you are a project manager, you can very easily create Trello cards from new Evernote notes by integrating Evernote with Trello.

This way, you won’t have to shift time and again between both the applications. Likewise, you can integrate Toggl and Trello to facilitate the creation of a Trello card for each new toggle time entry.

Boosts Productivity

There are a lot of tasks that tend to suck the productivity out of you. What do you do in such cases?

For example, how can you be productive when the task is copying files from one location to another?

Here is where SaaS integration steps in. If you want to copy a new Dropbox file to OneDrive, you can integrate both the applications and get this done efficiently.

Likewise, if you want to take the backup of your Instagram and Pinterest account photographs using Google Drive, you can integrate both of them with Google Drive respectively and see this happening on its own.

Increases Efficiency

[SaaS integration](SaaS Integration: What is SaaS Integration and Why Do You Need It?) can even help you become more efficient. Don’t believe us?

See for yourself!

If you are an HR professional with hundreds of emails to send almost daily, what you can do is integrate an application like Workable with Gmail and send out emails more efficiently.

If you are a meeting manager, you can integrate Google Sheets and Google Calendar to create Google Calendar events from new Google Sheets rows automatically.

If you want to make a list of your new contacts from HubSpot as a Google Sheet, you can integrate both the accounts and make the list easily.

Sounds great?

High ROI, Increased Revenue

SaaS integration may not always be easy to set up but once you have it in place, it will save a lot of time.

You may need to hire a SaaS integration consultant to get this done, but the ROI will be high and your business revenue will definitely get a boost.

When you are not focused on recurring tasks such as updating Google Sheets or Trello boards, you’d have time to focus on what actually drives value.

You’d have the focus to direct your energy in the right direction, which will definitely help boost the business.

Smart Customer Support

Customer support is one of the most important parts of your business. Why? Because if your customers are happy, they won’t leave.

So, how does SaaS integration help with improving your customer support?

For starters, you can use an interactive tool such as Typeform to collect customer queries rather than boring forms. Further, integrate Typeform with a customer support tool such as Freshdesk to create Freshdesk tickets for new Typeform entries.

If Trello is your favourite tool, you can integrate Zendesk and Trello to create Trello cards from new Zendesk tickets.

To never miss a ticket again, integrate Slack with your customer support tool and receive personalized messages for every support ticket raised.

Catching Up With Trends

It’s true that SaaS integration has a lot of benefits for your business. However, another reason to use SaaS integration can be that it is selling like hotcakes.

Businesses around the world are increasingly using SaaS integration to scale their business and manage their time and resources better. SaaS integration is definitely going to become a necessity for the upcoming businesses because there is only so much that you can do manually. And, this becomes even more important if you are managing a remote team.

Brings Down Operational Costs

An interesting fact to note here is that SaaS integration can actually bring down your operational costs.

Wondering how?

Well, if you are smartly attending to support tickets, have automated the majority of your workflows using smart SaaS integration and are using your human resources wisely for the tasks that they must do, you’d optimise your entire business value chain unknowingly.

This, further, will result in bringing down operational costs.

Smart Workflows

SaaS integration helps create smart workflows. Wondering how?

Well, SaaS integration can help you optimise the entire value chain, not just one part of it.

For instance, you can share blog posts to your social channels easily and automate the entire workflow from the time a blog post is marked done to when it is shared on all the social channels.

How? You can post new RSS items to a Facebook Page, Tweet new RSS Feed items, or Buffer new items in an RSS feed.

Furthermore, you can automatically send thank you messages to those who filled out your surveys without even bothering about it. How? You can integrate Gmail with Survey Monkey and send an email via Gmail for every new SurveyMonkey response that you have received. Or, you can even send an email via Office 365 for new SurveyMonkey responses.

What else can you automate and create a smart workflow?

You can integrate Typeform with Mailchimp to create a new subscriber every time someone fills out the Typeform.

Or, if you have a Google Sheet of subscribers, you can add subscribers to Mailchimp for new Google Sheets rows.

There is no end to possibilities. You can integrate almost any application with any other application - all you have to do is imagine a workflow and get in touch with a competent SaaS integration consultant to get that done.

Intelligent Resource Management

Finally, SaaS integration makes sure that you are managing your resources smartly.

What does this mean?

This primarily means that when systems are talking to each other, humans don’t have to.

With SaaS integration, you save a lot of time, effort and energy that goes into doing recurring tasks and performing monotonous activities.

Thus, your smart human resources can use their time to do what artificial intelligence can’t. This may sound very generic but when you actually see the implications of this, your mind would definitely be blown away. Thus, you see that SaaS integration is totally changing the way businesses operate. Be it tracking events and tasks with your calendar or getting notifications and reminders about everything in Slack, SaaS integration steals the show. However, the only downside is that some of us are not technically sound enough to set up these integrations.

And this is where SaaS integration consultants step in. A SaaS integration consultant can help you get started with any integration you want just like that. Plus, they would also educate you on which SaaS applications you should ideally integrate depending on your business and its requirements. If you are an entrepreneur or a freelancer, you should see this as a business investment that you make rather than an added expense. If you are managing an inventory or an online shop, integrations become more of a necessity rather than a luxury. For example, you can have a summary of all your e-conomic sales invoices sent to your Gmail on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis using SaaS integration. And, this is just one example. There are way too many of them waiting for you to explore them!