Integrations are on the rise—is our way of working keeping pace?

Integrations rarely start out as a separate area of responsibility. In most product organizations, they develop in parallel with the product. New systems are connected, APIs change, and partners need to be able to exchange information. Integrations evolve alongside the business and become a natural part of the development process.

This approach can work well for a long time. The challenge arises when the nature of integration work changes, while the organization continues to operate in the same way. What initially involved developing individual integrations eventually becomes a matter of management, monitoring, security, documentation, and long-term architecture. The integration environment simply becomes more complex than the approach that originally created it.

This is often where many organizations reach a tipping point.

What are the five signs that the approach needs to evolve?

There is rarely a single event that indicates integration efforts have outgrown their original form. Often, it comes down to several changes that, taken together, signal that the organization needs a more long-term approach:

1. Knowledge is concentrated among a few individuals.
   Integration logic, dependencies, and historical decisions are primarily held by individual developers. This creates vulnerability when someone changes roles or leaves the organization.
   

2. Administration and support are taking up an increasingly large portion of the workload.
   Monitoring, troubleshooting, security updates, and changes to connected systems are gradually requiring more attention. As support cases related to integrations increase, it simultaneously becomes more difficult for the product team to maintain focus on the core product.

3. Similar functionality is built multiple times.
   New integrations are developed as separate projects even though parts of the logic could be standardized and reused.
   

4. Responsibilities and priorities become unclear.
   There is no common approach to how integrations should be developed, documented, monitored, and managed over time.
   

5. New customer and market requirements become harder to meet.
   Each new integration requirement demands a disproportionate amount of analysis and adaptation, making it harder to maintain a steady development pace.

Each sign can be addressed individually. However, when several of them occur simultaneously, it indicates that integration work is no longer merely a development task. It has become a strategic capability that requires its own approach.

Integrations change in nature over time

A common misconception is that integration work is primarily about development. At Lundatech, we repeatedly see that development itself is only one part of the whole.

As the integration environment grows, management, monitoring, reuse, and architecture become at least as critical. Integration work is gradually evolving into a specialized field with requirements distinct from those of traditional product development.

Mature integration work, therefore, is not just about technology. It’s also about creating structures where knowledge, responsibility, and processes can be shared, managed, and developed over time.

The biggest change isn’t about technology

When integration projects become more difficult to manage, the spontaneous conclusion is often that the technical environment has become too complex. In practice, the challenge is at least as much about organization and work methods. This is a recurring pattern in the integration projects Lundatech works on. Integration efforts continue to be organized as a series of individual development projects, even though the integration environment has long served as a shared platform for the business.

The problem, therefore, is rarely the amount of code or the number of integrations. The problem is that the way of working is not evolving at the same pace as the integration environment.

What does a modern integration partnership entail?

The concept of outsourcing brings to mind the transfer of responsibility outside the organization. It rarely describes how modern integration environments are developed.

In practice, it’s more often about supplementing one’s own development organization with specialized expertise, established workflows, and an integration platform that makes integration work more standardized and less dependent on specific individuals. The organization itself continues to own the product, the customer relationship, and the priorities. The integration partner contributes the platform, specialized expertise, and responsibility for the development and management of the integration flows. How responsibility is allocated can vary: Lundatech can build and manage the integrations behind the client’s own offering, provide the platform for the client’s own development, or serve as a long-term integration partner. Shared working methods for monitoring, traceability, and security also make it easier to meet increased regulatory requirements.

Learn more about what iPaaS is and the role the integration platform plays in modern system landscapes.

This is also where the difference between a traditional consulting engagement and a long-term integration partnership becomes clear. The goal is not to deliver a single integration. The goal is to create a way of working where new integrations can be developed, reused, and managed in a consistent manner over time.

Hypergene developed a more scalable approach

Hypergene is an integration-intensive SaaS company whose customer implementations often involve two or more integrations. Historically, much of the integration logic was built on a customer-specific basis. As the system landscape and customer requirements changed, this approach became increasingly time-consuming, complex, and costly. Through its collaboration with Lundatech, Hypergene began using Business Cloud as an integrated part of its offering. The platform is used to standardize integration flows, enable centralized monitoring, and reuse integrations with commonly used systems. The solution is offered under Hypergene’s own brand, which allows Hypergene to retain ownership of both the offering and the customer relationship, while Lundatech provides the platform and the integration expertise behind the solution.

As a result, Hypergene can now establish integrations with commonly used systems significantly faster than before, when it could take up to a year. At the same time, the company has gained better support for both cloud-based systems and hybrid environments. A more standardized and proactively monitored integration process can also reduce support needs, provide customers with more stable workflows, and make it easier to launch new integrations without overburdening the product team. This case study illustrates an important principle: changing the way you work is not about relinquishing control. It’s about organizing integration efforts so that your own business can maintain control while benefiting from a specialized platform and expertise.

The approach determines how far the integration environment can grow

Organizations that succeed in scaling their integration work do not necessarily build fewer integrations than others. The difference lies in how the work is organized. By investing in common working methods, reusable components, and an integration platform, it becomes possible to develop new integrations without complexity increasing at the same rate. This allows integration capabilities to continue evolving while the organization maintains its focus on the product, customers, and innovation.

Integrations require an evolving approach

All integration environments change over time. The crucial question, therefore, is not merely who builds the integrations. The crucial question is whether the approach evolves at the same pace as the integration environment.

When integrations are treated as a strategic capability rather than a series of individual projects, it becomes easier to meet new requirements, develop new integrations, and create an integration landscape that remains scalable as the business changes.

The next step?

Once integration work has become a strategic capability, collaboration around integrations must also be able to evolve. Learn more about Lundatech’s integration partnerships and how a long-term collaboration can create the conditions for more scalable integration work.

Has the integration environment grown faster than your approach? Contact us to discuss how an integration partnership can complement your organization.