This article is based on Gil Feig’s brilliant talk at the Product-Led Summit in Austin. PLA members can enjoy the complete recording here. 

Integrations can be one of the biggest challenges a product team faces. 

As a seasoned engineering leader and a co-founder and CTO at Merge, I’ve had the chance to witness the struggles companies face with API integrations – whether it's figuring out what to build, how to prioritize it, or how to make it all work in the long run.

So, what does it take to turn this challenge into an opportunity? In this article, I’ll walk you through:

  • Prioritizing integrations based on customer needs and business impact
  • Creating a scalable strategy for integration development
  • Best practices for maintaining integrations and managing errors
  • Measuring success through key KPIs

The growing challenge of integrations

Building and maintaining integrations is becoming increasingly complex. According to BetterCloud’s 2024 State of SaaSOps report, the average organization company is now working with 122 different SaaS tools. 

As companies rely more on composable software stacks and work with more vendors, the demand for integrations is growing. Gartner reports that the ability to integrate with other technology is now a top-three factor in purchasing decisions for 34% of software buyers.

A survey we conducted last year showed that companies planned to build, on average, over 10 integrations in 2024 – the scale of the challenge is huge!

However, meeting these demands is becoming more difficult. Backend engineers in the U.S. now have an average salary of $155,427. So, not only is it harder to meet customer expectations, but the cost of doing so is rising too. 

As you add more integrations, the cost and effort grow exponentially. Every feature you add to your product needs to be integrated into each platform your solution is already connected with, multiplying the work. 

Graph showing the increasing cost of building and maintaining integrations over time, with effort increasing exponentially as more integrations are added, labeled as 'Build,' 'Maintain,' and 'Sustain,' with 'Opportunity Cost' increasing as the effort grows.

Over time, this becomes a vicious cycle – your roadmap shifts toward simply fulfilling integration requests rather than innovating. It can feel like you're running an integration factory rather than developing new features.

How to successfully execute your integration strategy as a PM

So, how can you overcome these challenges? I recommend a strategy that focuses on these five key stages: 

  1. Collecting customer feedback
  2. Prioritizing integrations
  3. Scoping and documentation
  4. Maintaining integrations
  5. Evaluating success. 

Let’s break it down.

Stage one: Collecting customer feedback

The first step is gathering feedback from both internal and external sources. This will help you decide which integrations to prioritize. Let’s explore how you can do that.

Customer research

Surveys are a great way to learn about the platforms your customers use daily. However, it’s also important to go beyond this to ask if customers want you to integrate with these platforms and, if so, what types of data movement they need. 

Interviews with customers are invaluable too. Having real conversations helps you get specific details about their needs, preferences, and pain points.

Win/loss analysis is your friend here. It’s arguably the best way to quantify how many deals you’ve lost due to missing integrations.

Pre-sales team feedback

When your sales team tells you, “We can’t close this deal because we don’t have this integration,” it’s tempting to rush in and start building. If it’s a multi-million dollar deal, that might be worthwhile; if not, step back and look at the data. Does this integration matter for multiple customers, or is it specific to just one?

Analyzing calls via a tool like Gong or Clari can help you see, for example, how many customers are asking for a Workday integration. You can even see the potential revenue impact of these requests.

Post-sales team feedback

Feedback from your post-sales team is also essential. Are missing integrations causing churn? Are users asking for new integrations? You need to gather this feedback consistently to understand how integrations impact your existing customers.

If you get an integration request from an existing customer, take a moment to consider the scalability of that integration. For example, they might be asking for an integration with Workday â€“ that’s all well and good, but Workday is a huge and complex platform, so if you build it to meet the needs of just one customer, it’s unlikely to scale well for others. 

You need to understand how other customers might use the integration and whether their setup is unique or customizable. This will help you make decisions that align with a broader integration strategy.

It’s also important to make sure your post-sales team has an easy way to submit feedback. You want this process to be as straightforward as possible so it doesn’t become a burden.

Stage two: Prioritizing product integrations

After gathering feedback and understanding your customers’ needs, the next step is figuring out which integrations to prioritize. To do this, I recommend using a scorecard to evaluate each integration request. 

xample of a scorecard framework for prioritizing product integrations, showing evaluation criteria including improvement on close rate, retention rate, target market expansion, engineering hours required, and cost of building and maintaining each integration.