MAKING THE CASE FOR CONNECTIVITYSeeking Business Value

Modern life is fully connected. Nest keeps our homes at the precise temperature we prefer,

Netflix knows what shows we want to watch when, and Pinterest lets us buy anything we want

to have, from any device we want to use. And it all happens seamlessly, which is important in

our increasingly busy lives. But you might wonder—why should our personal lives be so much

better connected than our professional ones?

Good news—they don’t have to be. Modern connectivity platforms can transform even the

oldest businesses into successful digital companies that can compete and win in today’s

digital world. Modern companies need to be dynamic because they operate in dynamic

industries. For nearly every organization, integration has real and immediate business impact

that helps companies not just survive but thrive. The types of tangible benefits that stem

from connectivity can vary wildly, from gaining cost or efficiency advantages to creating new,

revenue-generating opportunities with existing assets.

Having helped hundreds of companies capture the advantages of connectivity, Monday

Call and Jitterbit understand integration in and out. Some of our customers have built simple

integrations that enable them to connect to a third party service, such as using Google Maps

to create a mash-up that shows an order’s location on its way to the customer, or sending

sales orders to SAP with an automated digital process instead of by hand. Other companies

have opted for a full-blown ERP system integration that ties together all of the Lead-to-Cash

systems behind the scenes while seamlessly improving the customer experience. No matter

the scope or applications involved, integration improves business results.

In this whitepaper, we outline some emerging integration trends and explain some motivators

for connecting the cloud and on-premise applications that drive your modern digital business.

Read on to get connected.

I N T E G R AT I O N

I S N O L O N G E R

O P T I O N A L

F O R M O D E R N

D I G I TA L

C O M PA N I E S .

Views from a Consulting Firm and Connectivity Platform

INTEGRATION 101:

GET CONNECTED TO GET AHEAD

+

INTEGRATION 101: INTEGRATING FOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE+

NEW TRENDS IN CONNECTIVITYIntegration is often viewed as a daunting technical endeavor. But as technology enters

nearly every market and disrupts every aspect of every company, business owners must

become fluent in the costs and benefits of integration or run the risk of missing out on

significant digital opportunities. In essence, integration is a must-have in an increasingly

digital world. Fortunately, a few new trends are making integration easier than it’s ever been.

Application Suites Disperse, Creating More Components to Choose From

The technology landscape is growing more and more componentized, with best of breed

technologies being stitched together through integrations, and the dominance of complete

enterprise application suites declining. Even non-technology companies operating in less

technical markets need to integrate back-end systems and provide digital customer- or

partner-facing solutions to keep up with the times and get ready for the future.

New Standards Simplify & Accelerate Connectivity

The advent of standards like Web Services (XML, SOAP, REST), Single Sign-On (SAML),

and HTTP have accelerated the proliferation of integrations. The simplicity and scalability of

cloud connectivity solutions like Jitterbit has brought easy-to-use sophistication to the general

integration market. This helps to significantly lower the cost of implementing the integration

as well as the cost of ongoing maintenance and administration. Integration times are now

measured in days and weeks rather than months and years as they were in the past.

Modern integration tools make it possible to connect internally built proprietary systems

and on-premise packaged software with even far-flung third-party Internet SaaS offerings,

all using the same integration approach. It’s a refreshing approach to connecting apps,

and a strong foundation for the digital future of any business.

CRM

SOCIAL HR DEV

APPLICATION SUITE

SUPPORT FINANCE

MOBILE APPS

CLOUD APPS 3RD PARTY WEB SERVICE

INTERNALLY BUILT APPS/DB’s

ON-PREMISE APPS

INTEGRATION 101: INTEGRATING FOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE+

ADVANTAGES OF INTEGRATIONJust because integration has become easier doesn’t

mean it’s automatically worth doing. So what are the

primary business benefits that drive companies to

undertake integration projects? Here are a few of the

leading examples we’ve encountered working with

hundreds of leading companies across different verticals.

Integration Enables Greater Efficiency

Modern companies have multiple systems that are

bounded by traditional functional groups. Sales teams

have their CRM system. Support teams have their

ticketing system. Finance teams have their accounting

systems. Marketing teams have their outreach and

inbound tools. Manufacturing/fulfillment teams have their

ERP systems. Engineering has project management and

bug tracking tools. The list goes on and on.

This proliferation of systems means that a standard customer may be represented six

different ways by six (or more) different records across these various siloed systems. As

a result, when new customers signs up for a product or service, their information has to

be entered into six (or more) different systems, often setting up those customers for a

confusing and disjointed experience depending on the department they’re talking to.

Manually entering and maintaining customer data is inefficient, prone to human error and

can create data problems that may take years to clean up—not to mention disrupt the

customer experience in many ways.

It’s not just provisioning new customers where these massive (but solvable) data

inefficiencies pop up. The need for synchronization between systems may become

apparent when creating a new order from a previously closed deal, or invoicing a customer

based on usage data, products purchased, or services rendered. Alternately, customer

usage data might need to inform programs to reduce churn, or help tailor new product

bundles for existing customers. Whatever the business scenario, it’s important that the right

data be available in every system to enable the most efficient operations (and the best

customer experience).

In short, integration automatically brings together every instance where a customer is

represented, eliminates tedious and error-prone manual work, and creates an accurate,

consistent picture of customer activity.

I N T E G R AT I O N

C R E AT E S A N

A C C U R AT E

P I C T U R E

O F C U S T O M E R

A C T I V I T Y.

INTEGRATION 101: INTEGRATING FOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE+

Integration Speeds Up Operations

Customers expect responsive, accurate service. And

if they don’t get it, they can express their frustration on

social media—or, worse, switch quickly to a competitor.

Switching costs for customers are at a historic low,

which means that providing an optimal experience at

all times is absolutely paramount. A common disaster

scenario occurs when a customer registers online, then

immediately calls up customer support with a question.

The customer service agent needs all of the new

customer’s data to be available at the time of the call, but

too often, that information hasn’t yet been populated—or

manually entered—across all of the systems that house

customer data. But the customer will have little patience

if the customer service agent admits, “Sorry, I don’t have

access to the data you just entered in our systems.”

Integration enables real-time access to information so that

the right people always have the right information at the

right time, and can help customers out in a timely manner.

SKULLCANDY surfaces problems with orders in real time thanks to cloud

connectivity. Before adopting an integration solution, it could take hours or more to

uncover problems with an order. Now, Jitterbit connects these systems automatically

to deliver error messages right away. In addition to highlighting orders quickly,

Skullcandy can also onboard new partners faster with seamless connections

between SAP, Salesforce, Magento, SPS Commerce, Amazon, UPS, DHL and more.

CUSTOMER STORY

In addition to customer service, time to market has become increasingly important in high

growth industries. Gaining “first-mover” advantage is now key to establishing a strong

brand and building a customer base. Internet-based companies in particular feel this

“first-mover” advantage more than others, because the barriers to creating a website or

mobile app are the lowest they’ve ever been.

We’ve worked with several tech companies that recognized they didn’t have time to

reinvent the wheel and build all of their own systems. They saw that significant portions

of their business, like marketing operations (particularly the newsletter and other drip

campaign interactions), CRM functions, and billing functions, could all be outsourced to

tools designed for the purpose.

I N T E G R AT I O N PA R T N E R S

C A N P R O V I D E VA L U E FA S T

B E C A U S E T H E Y ’ V E D O N E

I N T E G R AT I O N S M U LT I P L E

T I M E S A N D C A N S E T Y O U U P

F O R S U C C E S S Q U I C K LY.

INTEGRATION 101: INTEGRATING FOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE+

A C U S T O M E R

S H O U L D H AV E

A C C E S S T O

A L L O F T H E I R

R E G I S T R AT I O N

D ATA , B I L L I N G

I N F O R M AT I O N ,

U S A G E D ATA

A N D M O R E W I T H I N

A S I N G L E V I E W.

BERKLEE ONLINE built a 360-degree view of its student body with the Jitterbit

integration platform. By connecting Salesforce with Ellucian Colleague ERP and other

in-house databases, the college created a complete view of its prospects and students,

from their initial contact with the school to their degree completion. Now, Berklee can

tell students what classes to register for and what assignments to complete, and be

confident that the data is accurate and will set students on a path to success.

CUSTOMER STORY

As a result, these companies focused on building up the “brains” of their Internet service

(their core business)—and seamlessly integrated with a best of breed CRM, financial system,

and marketing automation tool so that they could get to market significantly faster than the

competition, without taking the time to build new tools to support their growth. Connecting

existing applications that excel at their function not only minimizes administrative costs, but

also ensures that these components of the business are constantly improving (thanks to their

external developers) without additional effort from the companies that use them.

Integration Provides a 360-Degree View of the Customer

Both customers and employees need a 360-degree view of the customer. Customers have

little patience for the notion that they may be unable to see all their information on one page

when they log into a portal because the data is stored in several different, non-integrated

systems. A customer should have access to all of their registration data, billing information,

usage data and more within a single view. If that’s not available, companies risk alienating

and losing their customers.

Employees that are serving customers also need easy access to the most recent customer

data. Single sign-on technologies can alleviate some of the pain of having to log into

multiple systems to see data, but having integrations that truly link the data together in

a central interface can be a superior approach, as it enables employees to work more

efficiently and log in to fewer applications.

One such customer, FiveStars cards, provides a service that helps storefronts and

other businesses offer loyalty programs. FiveStars was able to pass usage data back to

Salesforce so that field reps would be instantly armed with information about how often

the customer was using their service. It was powerful for the field reps to go into meetings

knowing whether the customer was hardly using the system or using it a lot (as well as how

the usage was trending).

INTEGRATION 101: INTEGRATING FOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE+

Consolidated data also offers a true 360-degree view of the customer for reporting and

analysis purposes. When you can combine profile details, usage information, and billing

specifics in the aggregate, then drill down for analysis, you can gain valuable insights to

individual customers and customer segments. This helps answer crucial questions like,

What is the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) across geographies, or across sales reps?,

How do we measure marketing conversions?, or even What further segmentations should be created based on usage patterns—and is there further correlation among these customer with similar usage habits?

Armed with the right data, companies can get accurate answers in situations where they

had to make educated guesses in the past.

Integration Lets Companies Pick Best of Breed Solutions

Many software providers like to upsell additional functionality to customers through

packaged suite options made up of additional apps that aren’t at the top of their game.

Apps that are a part of a suite may provide the advantage of already being “packaged,” but

they can unnecessarily boost the overall cost and complexity of a company’s technology

footprint.

Integration puts customers in the driver’s seat regarding vendor selection, because

customers can pick best of breed solutions in different areas and combine them using

integrations. While there are some clear advantages to a single, unified software product,

there are also many advantages to a multi-vendor approach, including the benefit of using

the best software for the job—as well as spreading the risk of supplier provided software.

Being able to pick the best tool for the job, not just the one that comes pre-bundled by a

vendor, is a key benefit of connectivity, and one that will continue to develop as applications

and services become increasingly componentized.

Integration Offers the Capability to Keep Connecting

Most software being built today is designed with APIs in mind, which in turn means that

integration connections are top of mind for developers. Forward-thinking companies

recognize that, while there may be a User Interface allowing customers to access their

services, they also need a programmatic interface to support those customers who require

superior automation and customization. Here is just a sampling of third-party API use

cases that can confer significant advantage to companies, and are enhanced by additional

connectivity:

• An e-commerce company wants to provide international support by leveraging a

third-party tax calculator so that tax can be automatically calculated as part of the

transaction. The system simply sends the shipping address information to the tax

calculator service and it automatically returns tax information to be included in the

transaction—all seamlessly displayed to the customer.

I N T E G R AT I O N

P U T S

C U S T O M E R S

I N T H E

D R I V E R ’ S S E AT.

INTEGRATION 101: INTEGRATING FOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE+

• A company that provides translators to local businesses has

search functionality that finds the best translator for the job

that is closest geographically. Integration with Google Maps

enables company to calculate the translator’s distance from

the business and display it on a map.

• An e-commerce company needs to do a quick credit card

authorization as part of making a reservation. They also want to

offer multiple payment options at the lowest transaction price.

They are able to shop around for different payment providers

and integrate the one that best serves their website needs.

• A consumer products provider needs to improve their returns

process by streamlining RMA approvals and automatically

generating shipping labels that would be sent to customers.

Any unused postage is also credited back to the company

without manual intervention.

• A construction company needs a place to store large CAD files

that is cheaper and more scalable than storing it in a CRM.

They build an interface into Amazon AWS to take advantage of

the low storage costs that Amazon provides, then connect the

CRM solution with Amazon so that users can easily search for

and otherwise reference the stored drawings from the CRM.

These are all real world scenarios happening for companies today. Some of them are even

our customers. And these cutting edge use cases can become a reality for your company as

well, if you adopt the right integration strategy. Your customer views their world as connected.

To meet their needs faster than the competition, you should, too.

PLANNING YOUR INTEGRATIONWe’ve explored some of the forces driving the need to integrate, like providing efficient and

timely service, getting a complete view of the customer, selecting best of breed solutions,

and connecting new services to support continued growth. Now, we dive in and look more

closely at the many elements companies need to consider when planning an integration.

Consider Business Goals First

As with any IT project, the first thing to do is to truly understand the business goals for the

integration. What is the business benefit? What would be considered success? What is the

budget? What is the timeframe? What are the potential future benefits that can be derived

from future phases? These questions need to be answered before any integration work can

start. Otherwise, the integration will potentially cause as many problems as it solves.

INTEGRATION 101: INTEGRATING FOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE+

Architect for the Longer Term

The integration architecture should be considered in order to make sure it fits in line with the

company’s future roadmap. Some key considerations here include:

• What system is the customer master? In other words, what system is

the final arbiter of customer data? Not deciding this immediately will set you up

for problems down the road.

• What is the financial system of record? This is likely the systems that

the finance team uses to prepare reports.

• In what order will systems be integrated? You want to minimize

rework on any integration and build a system that can accommodate longer-term

growth. You want to make sure the most important and/or riskier flows are worked

out first so that others can accommodate.

That being said, integration may be tactical and provide a short-term advantage at times.

Because the cost and time-to-market for integration projects is decreasing, a temporary

integration solution may give companies a big advantage in advance of a larger move—as

well as offer the chance to learn some lessons along the way.

Choose Your Technology

There are a lot of ways to integrate systems. Often the first approach is to determine if

there is an existing connector or app that will do the job. For example, Salesforce has an

application marketplace called the AppExchange, where some of the apps are pre-built

connectors between Salesforce and a specific third party application. The connector or

app approach often offers the lowest overall cost and the fastest to market because it is a

purposefully built integration. In addition, if the connector is well supported, it will continue

to grow in functionality that you will be able to leverage without additional effort on your

part. If there is no pre-built connector or if the existing connector is deficient in functionality

for your needs, an integration may be in order.

G A I N I N G

“ F I R S T- M O V E R ”

A D VA N TA G E I S

N O W K E Y T O

E S TA B L I S H I N G A

S T R O N G B R A N D

A N D B U I L D I N G

A C U S T O M E R

B A S E .

INTEGRATION 101: INTEGRATING FOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE+

Integration options may include batch data loading, selecting a software solution (like

Jitterbit), or choosing programmatic API development. Each approach has its own pros and

cons. Batch loading is usually fairly inexpensive but has the unfortunate side effect of not

being real-time—it’s only as fast as the fastest refresh rate you choose and may require data

extraction and prepping. Things can rapidly get out-of-sync if the refresh is not fast enough.

Bi-directional synchronization can also be a challenge with batch loading. Integration

software can be highly scalable and flexible but can add cost and introduce a new layer

to manage and maintain. Finally, direct API development provides a substantial amount of

control but has significantly more development and ongoing maintenance costs than other

options. Any improvements must also be developed in-house, which adds ongoing costs in

an environment where your solution needs to grow with you, quickly.

Map It Out

Once the high-level architecture and roadmap are understood, it’s time to map out the nitty

gritty details of the individual integrations. A couple of questions to consider:

• Are systems being integrated to pass data or to kick off actions?

• What data is being brought over? How big is it? What are peak loads?

• Is it bi-directional, uni-directional?

• Can data be modified in the destination? If so, what if changes can be made to it?

Which is the customer master?

• When does information exchange occur (batch? real-time?)?

• How is the data mapped between two systems? Can you map field-to-field? What type

of data transformations must take place in order to map data correctly?

• Is there a unique identifier that matches up the data in source and destination systems?

What is it and is it truly unique? Oftentimes it is a unique customer number. Sometimes

it can be an email address. In other situations, it might be a social security number or

a telephone number. For some businesses it is a physical address. Unique identifiers

or keys, need to be required and the data must be clean. Selecting an identifier and

ensuring it remains unique is an absolute requirement for data integrity purposes.

• Is there a possibility of duplicate data coming in? How should it be handled?

• How will the initial data interchange occur for “legacy” data? Will it automatically get

brought over as part of the initial sync, or does an initial data migration need to occur?

A S K T H E R I G H T

Q U E S T I O N S

U P F R O N T T O P L A N

A S U C C E S S F U L

I N T E G R AT I O N .

INTEGRATION 101: INTEGRATING FOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE+

Expertise

Everything in the integration world is conceptually getting simpler. APIs and standards are

now well-established and commonplace to use. Software solutions like Jitterbit have point-

and-click interfaces so that integrations can be built by administrators and not developers.

Integrations can often be done in-house if you have the time and expertise.

However, integration partners can provide value fast because they’ve done integrations

multiple times and can set you up for success quickly. This creates numerous advantages,

including:

• Faster time to market

• An integration that’s done right the first time

• Reduced risk

• Helping you take full advantage of the integration

Care and Feeding

The only constant is change. Your business is moving quickly and systems always have

to play catch up. In addition, IT infrastructure needs constant care and maintenance

by competent administrators. You need to make sure you have the skills on hand when

things break. While becoming easier to use, systems have also become more complex.

In addition, depending upon multiple systems has more points of failure. This also means

debugging can be more complex. You need to:

• Allocate time and resources for ongoing maintenance, support and administration.

• Recognize that things change. New data is being added to the system. New users are

using the system. New use cases are being created regularly. Tweaks may be being

added to the system.

• Acknowledge that things will break. Things will need to be restarted. Problems will

need to be debugged. Good architecture has fewer issues but software, no matter

how good, never runs perfectly on its own forever. Deciding in advance who will be

responsible for integration troubleshooting can save headaches later.

E V E R Y T H I N G

I N T H E

I N T E G R AT I O N

W O R L D I S

C O N C E P T U A L LY

G E T T I N G

S I M P L E R .

INTEGRATION 101: INTEGRATING FOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE+

TAKE THE NEXT STEPIntegrations are no longer scary, time-consuming projects that are prone to failure. Modern

integrations are lightweight, robust and add significant value immediately. If you don’t already

have a working integration solution in place, now’s a great time to start. And you have our

guidance at your disposal.

Let’s review what we’ve learned about planning and maintaining successful integrations at a

high level:

Identify the business value first. Start thinking about the application connections from

the end-user perspective. Where can system integration really create a benefit? Take a

customer-centric view. How does the customer view their relationship? Imagine how a single

dashboard would display all of the right customer components and interactions in one place.

Does it improve the customer experience? How could it be better?

Then, draw the architecture diagram. What systems do you have in place, what systems

do you want to have in place, and how they might all interrelate? Then move to the technology

choice. Is there already a commercially viable, cost effective connector readily available?

Then plan the best way to implement it.

Finally, always budget for ongoing support and maintenance as you and your customers

learn to enjoy the benefits of connected systems. Remember that no integration is perfect

forever, and the best integrations grow with you over time to accommodate new systems

and uses.

We hope this information helps you put together a successful integration! For more

information about how Monday Call approaches Salesforce integration, visit jitterbit.com.

I F Y O U D O N ’ T

A L R E A D Y H AV E

A W O R K I N G

I N T E G R AT I O N

S O L U T I O N I N

P L A C E , N O W ’ S

A G R E AT T I M E

T O S TA R T.

Jitterbit, Inc. 1301 Marina Village Parkway, Suite 201

Alameda, CA 94501 1.877.852.3500 | info@jitterbit.com

Start a Free 30-Day Trial at:WWW.JITTERBIT.COM/TRY

© Jitterbit, Inc, Jitterbit and the Jitterbit logo are trademarks of Jitterbit, Inc. All other registration marks are the property of their respective owners.