Organizations are adopting SaaS at an unprecedented rate. In 2024, companies used an average of 450 SaaS applications, (up 21% from 2023).
Your customers are prioritizing SaaS app integrations in their buying criteria, and offering these integrations can prove a major advantage for your business. Integrations can make your product sticker, boost retention, ensure valuable product differentiation, and even increase revenue.
But how do you get started?
You may have tried various methods: collaborating with external teams for one-off integrations, referring customers to an ISV or tech partner, or building integrations in-house. However, as the number and complexity of integration requests grow, your product team may be facing backlogs, resource constraints, and budget limitations.
If you’re considering an embedded iPaaS solution, it’s likely because these approaches aren’t meeting your needs. In this article, we’ll discuss why an embedded iPaaS is crucial for addressing your customers’ integration needs and outline the 5 key features to look for when choosing a solution.
Why leverage an embedded iPaaS?
By leveraging a modern embedded integrations platform, you can capitalize on market trends and ensure your product’s long-term success.
A modern embedded iPaaS allows you to offer the connectivity and depth of integration your customers require while managing the necessary functionality as your customer base and use cases expand. Additionally, the platform can provide automation solutions that seamlessly integrate into your application and can be packaged and sold to your customers.
To find an embedded integration solution that scales with your business, look for these essential features:
1. Pre-built Connectors to Popular Apps and Databases
Pre-built connectivity to hundreds of SaaS apps and databases can accelerate your product roadmap by broadening the scope of what can be integrated and automated. This not only saves your product and engineering teams significant time but also allows them to focus on higher-value tasks.
With pre-built connectors, your team can quickly create an in-product marketplace where clients can explore and be inspired by the wide range of available integrations.
2. A User-Friendly, Low-Code UI
Whether you’re using a professional services team to build custom integrations or having a product owner package pre-built configurations, the experience should be intuitive and empowering. A low-code UI enables non-technical users to efficiently maintain and enhance your solution. This not only conserves your engineering resources but also allows you to scale rapidly as your customer base and integration strategy grow.
An embedded integration solution should be accessible to users of all backgrounds.
3. Flexible Configuration for a Smooth Customer Experience
An embedded integration solution should offer flexibility in configuring and deploying integrations and automations for your customers. This includes the ability to embed the solution into your product, allowing customers to create their own automations. It can also mean providing in-line experiences where customers benefit from automations without the hassle of setup and management.
4. Enterprise-Grade Security
Managing this additional responsibility effectively at scale requires finding an embedded provider committed to data protection. Look for a provider compliant with GDPR, SOC-2 Type II certified, and with global data centers to meet regional data residency requirements.
5. Chatbots for Seamless Access
Employees spend a significant amount of time on business communication platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams. According to Slack, their average user has the app open for over 9 hours a day.
Given this, an embedded integration solution should offer customizable chatbots that bridge your clients’ business communication platforms and your product. These chatbots can provide a productized extension of your platform, allowing users to access specific data or actions without leaving their communication platform.
Workato’s Embedded Platform
Workato offers an Embedded Platform that accelerates product innovation and adoption by offering integrations at the speed and depth your customers demand.
With Workato, you can:
- Take embedded integrations to market 3x faster with access to 1000+ pre-built connectors to SaaS applications and databases and hundreds of thousands of automation templates—which we refer to as “recipes”
- Enable less technical resources to implement integrations and automations in minutes via our low-code UI – freeing up engineering resources to focus on you core product
- Seamlessly embed our Enterprise Automation Platform directly into your product with the configuration options that meet your needs
- Use a centralized admin dashboard to easily track usage and manage permissions
- Drive new revenue and differentiation by productizing your integrations and automations
- Leverage our patented Workbot to build chatbots that can be incorporated into your product’s workflow automations—or that simply allow clients to access data and actions from your product without leaving their business comms platform
To learn more about how Workato’s Embedded Platform can help drive efficient, product-led growth you can schedule a demo with one of our integration experts.
