How to think about integrations as a PM
Learn how to build powerful integrations as a product manager
When done right, product integrations can drive growth, increase retention, and open doors to new revenue opportunities.
Choosing which integrations to prioritize and how exactly to ship them are important aspects to thinking about integrations as a product manager.
This article discusses these key considerations to help you make the right integration decisions.
Choosing the right integrations
Not every integration request should be treated equally. Selecting the right integrations to build requires balancing customer needs with ROI.
It’s a good idea to leverage both quantitative and qualitative data from your customers and the competitive landscape to inform your decisions.
Here are some questions to check agains when you decide which integrations to prioritize:
- Customer demand: How many customers need it?
- Business impact: Will it reduce churn, help sales conversations, and/or boost revenue?
- Feasibility: How difficult is it to implement and maintain?
- Strategic fit: Does it align with your roadmap and competitive positioning?
Jobs-to-be-done of the integration
Make sure the integration addresses the customer’s core needs. This can vary for different integrations and categories of integrations in the same product.
Think about the job(s) to be done of each use-case and plan your integrations accordingly. Our experience helping 400+ companies ship integrations can be summarized as:
- Deep integrations with other core systems of your customers usually have the following attributes
- Require 1 or 2-way data sync of all relevant entities
- Require per customer config of integrations: field mappings, options, enabling/disabling sub-features of the integration, etc.
- Typically integrate with CRM, Accounting, HRIS, ATS, etc.
- Shallower integrations with a large number of APIs for specific use-cases typically follow these patterns
- Often about passing data on to another system: add leads to CRM, log emails sent, create issues in Jira, etc.
- Might have 2-way syncs to e.g. show status of ticket from external system, or just be a point-contact to enable a larger workflow
- Often used when integrating with productivity tools and sales & marketing workflows: Marketing automation, Task trackers, Calendars, etc.
Build or buy?
Once you've identified the integrations to prioritize, the next decision is whether to build them in-house or leverage a third party platform. As you will see below, each approach has trade-offs.
While building integrations completely in-house gives you full control, it comes with not insignificant hidden costs, such as:
- Resource drain - you will take engineering time away from core product innovation.
- Maintenance overhead - having a robust infra that powers your integrations and maintenance requires more effort than you think.
- Slow time to market - what you think will only take an hour tends to balloon up into weeks long, inhibiting you from high product velocity.
Turning to a third party integration tool like Nango, Merge, or Paragon can accelerate development and reduce engineering overhead. Some tools, however, come with their own costs and limitations.
The key here is to choosing the right integrations partner. Some aspects to consider:
- Supported integrations – Does the tool cover the APIs you need now and into the future?
- Ease of implementation – How quickly can your team ship an integration using this tool? Does it come with built-in tooling to make developers' lives easier?
- Scalability – Can you scale integrations with this tool?
Conclusion
Integrations can be a key driver of growth, retention, and market expansion. By prioritizing the right integrations and making an informed choice on building vs buying, product managers can confidently deliver integrations as a strategic lever to delight customers and contribute to strategic milestones.
Ready to streamline your integrations? Explore how Nango can help you ship integrations quickly while not compromising scalability.
