Lundatech
When integration projects are discussed, the conversation almost always centers on development costs. How many hours will it take? How long will implementation take? What resources need to be allocated?
These are relevant questions. But they’re rarely the most important ones. The true cost of in-house integrations is rarely reflected in the project budget. It’s reflected in everything the development team never has time to build. That’s why many organizations underestimate the long-term cost of integration work.
What do in-house integrations actually cost?
Most investments start with a budget. Development time is estimated. Projects are planned. Consulting services are calculated, and a timeline is set for implementation. These types of costs are relatively easy to track because they can be linked to a single project. It is significantly more difficult to measure the value of what is left out.
Every hour of development time spent building or maintaining integrations is, at the same time, an hour of development time not spent improving the product, developing new features, or creating the next competitive advantage. That’s where the real cost arises.
Development capacity is a strategic resource
In most product organizations, development capacity is the most limited resource.
There are almost always more ideas than there is time to implement them. Roadmaps need to be prioritized, features are postponed, and strategic initiatives are put on hold because development resources are insufficient. When integration work expands, it therefore has a significant impact beyond a single project.
It affects the organization’s ability to innovate. At Lundatech, we frequently see that discussions about integration costs get bogged down in development hours. Far less often is there discussion of what that same development capacity could have achieved if it had been used for product development, innovation, or new business opportunities. That is often the question that should be at the center of the discussion.
Opportunity cost changes the entire calculation
A single integration project may be entirely reasonable to undertake. The challenge arises when the same pattern repeats itself over several years. One integration becomes ten. Ten becomes fifty. At the same time, the need for maintenance, customizations, and further development grows. Each individual integration effort can still be justified. But the cumulative effect is that an ever-larger portion of development capacity is tied up in integration work.
That is when the opportunity cost begins to grow faster than the direct development cost.
The question is no longer what the next integration will cost. The question becomes what the organization is choosing to forgo by continuing to prioritize integration work over product development.
When does integration become a long-term cost?
Many integration projects are considered complete once the solution has gone live. In practice, that’s often when the next phase begins. APIs change. Security requirements evolve. Business systems are updated. Data models change, and new dependencies arise. Every integration therefore also entails a long-term responsibility for maintenance, further development, and management.
As the integration environment grows, so does the need for monitoring and troubleshooting. Problems that could previously be resolved quickly now risk impacting support, product teams, and the development organization. At the same time, demands for security, traceability, and control are increasing. Without standardized workflows, the ongoing costs will therefore be significantly higher than the original project budget and will continue to strain development capacity for many years.
An iPaaS can consolidate development, monitoring, and management into a single integration platform, thereby creating a more scalable way of working.
The most successful organizations think differently
At Lundatech, we see a clear difference between organizations that succeed in scaling their integration efforts and those that gradually accumulate a growing integration debt.
The difference rarely comes down to how many integrations are developed. It comes down to how development capacity is valued.
Organizations that succeed in scaling ask a different question early on.
Not: “Can we build this integration?”
But rather: “Is this the best use of our development capacity?”
That question often changes the entire perspective on integration work. This becomes clear in Lundatech’s collaboration with Next. Next owns the brand, the offering, and the customer relationship, while Lundatech builds and manages the integrations behind the white-label solution. A customer can typically activate an integration in just a minute. Next has launched more integrations, reduced support workload, and freed up time to focus on its core product. The company estimates that the organization would have needed to be at least twice as large if the equivalent integration environment had been built and managed in-house. The opportunity cost is tangible: more development capacity can be devoted to the product, innovation, and customer value.
The real cost is about priorities
Integrations are a necessary part of modern digital products. The question, therefore, is rarely whether integrations should be built. The question is how to best utilize development capacity as integration needs continue to grow.
The true cost of in-house integrations is rarely visible in the project budget.
It is reflected in the product initiatives that are postponed, the innovations that are never prioritized, and the development work that is put on hold. That is why the most important question is not about how much an integration costs. It is about what that development capacity could have achieved instead.
Next Steps
When the opportunity cost of integration work begins to impact product development, it’s often time to review how integration capabilities are organized. Learn more about how Business Cloud frees up development capacity through faster and more stable integrations.
How much capacity is tied up in integration work? Contact us to learn how Business Cloud can free up time for your core product.