For customers, it goes without saying that a SaaS service should work seamlessly with their other systems. If a connection the customer needs is missing, it can make it harder to move forward with the deal. That’s why integrations quickly become an important part of your offering. For the product team, this raises a practical question: what should you build and maintain yourselves, and what do you want help with?
You can develop the integrations in-house, build them yourselves in Business Cloud, or let us at Lundatech build and manage them. To evaluate the options, you need to consider both the initial delivery and the work involved in keeping the integrations functioning over time.
With in-house development, you’re responsible for developing and managing the integration logic. The work can be performed by your own developers or contracted specialists and can build on existing libraries and cloud services. You choose the architecture and approach and are also responsible for arranging testing, monitoring, and maintenance.
With Business Cloud and your own team, developers gain a shared environment for integration work. We are responsible for platform operations, while your team builds and manages the integrations with our support as needed. Business Cloud provides your team with support in several areas:
With Lundatech as your integration partner, you get Business Cloud along with our assistance in building and managing the integrations. In this setup, we handle the integration work, while you maintain the customer relationship.
| Area | In-House Development | Business Cloud with ’s own team |
Lundatech as an integration partner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Development | Your in-house or contracted developers build the integration solution. | Your team builds the integrations in Business Cloud, with our support as needed. | We build the integrations in Business Cloud. |
| Platform Operations | Managed based on the selected architecture and purchased operations services. | We at Lundatech are responsible for platform operations. | We are responsible for platform operations. |
| Management | You handle maintenance and change management. | Your team manages the integrations in Business Cloud, with support from us as agreed. | We monitor, update, and further develop the integrations within the scope of our agreed-upon collaboration. |
| Customer Relations and Support | You organize onboarding, customer support, and technical troubleshooting. | You organize customer support and enlist our help as agreed. | In the white-label arrangement, you retain the customer relationship and are responsible for onboarding and support for the end customer. |
| Cost Model | Development work, tools, infrastructure, and management are included in the cost estimate. | The cost of Business Cloud and the agreed-upon support is combined with your own development and management work. | The white-label offering is priced per customer. Together, we clarify what the delivery will include. |
The comparison shows in-house development and two ways to work with Business Cloud. You can build and manage the integrations yourselves with our support, or let us handle the integration work. Together, we’ll determine what support you need and how responsibilities should be allocated.
An integration needs to continue functioning even after the initial delivery. An API may change, authentication credentials may expire, and new customer requirements may affect which data needs to be transferred.
Who then notices when something isn’t working? Who investigates the cause, updates the integration, and tests to ensure it’s working again? And who provides feedback to the client? This is where the difference between platform operations and integration management becomes clear. The platform may be up and running while an integration needs to be adapted to a changed system. Monitoring and version control provide support, but someone also needs to do the work.
For your product team, it’s therefore important to know who’s handling the changes, even when the developers are busy with the next release.
With in-house development, you choose how the solution should be designed. The question is how much development time you want to allocate to the integrations over time. If your team is building in Business Cloud, we need to clarify together what you want to do yourselves and what support you need from us.
When you choose Lundatech’s service model, we build and manage the integrations in Business Cloud. With white-label, you offer them under your own brand and retain the customer relationship. You are responsible for onboarding and support for the end customer, while we perform the integration work as agreed. Together, we therefore need to clarify how customer inquiries and technical issues will be handled.
The choice comes down to what expertise you want within your own team and which tasks you want a partner to handle over time.
A fair cost comparison must be based on the same integration requirements. A platform fee, an internal development budget, and an offering that includes management cover different aspects of the work.
Therefore, include both the implementation and the ongoing work: development, testing, operations, monitoring, support, and changes to connected systems. Also clarify what is included when more customers are connected or new integrations are needed. Then use your product plan as a starting point. Which integration tasks do you want to allocate development time to? What expertise do you need to retain in-house? And what responsibilitiesshould an integration partner take on to ensure the partnership works effectively in day-to-day operations?
Would you like to discuss which approach is best suited for your product and your team? Schedule a consultation with us at Lundatech, and we’ll review your customer integrations and how we can assist with development, operations, and management.