A few days ago I heard from Javelin CRM (my review here) that they’d completed their integration with Xero (my review here). Take a look at the video explaining how the integration works;
It’s kind of odd that after years of evangelising the benefits that SaaS integration can bring, I’m still excited and surprised by how easy and valuable those integration can be. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last 15 years or so battling every day with disconnected and totally unfriendly software – it’s hard to look back on that and then see how easy SaaS makes it.
I was reminded of all this the other day when my ZDnet subscription loudly suggested that I download an ebook looking at how “companies [can] avoid common pitfalls by simplifying company processes with a single software platform”. Naively I thought the ebook would give a rational discussion of the pros and cons of single vendor integrated business suites versus a more holistic approach of aggregating different solutions from different vendors (cherry picking if you like) and relying on smart API work to make it all hum together.
No such luck. Instead the ebook was a complete marketing spin for a vendor and their integrated ERP/CRM offerings – it loudly told of the death and damnation that small businesses would suffer trying to work with solutions from different vendors. So the above video is a great foil to the whitepaper (which, despite being almost worthless in content, is beautifully laid out and a great example of graphic design).
So congratulations to Javelin on a lovely piece of work and I’m looking forward to the ecosystem getting bigger and better in the months to come…
Thanks for the kind words on Javelin.
This reminds me of a previous role selling a monolithic system in financial services. All good stuff at the time because if you bought separate systems you had to spend ages integrating them. However the downside was the lock-in to a single vendor which takes the pressure off the vendor to keep on delivering good service and enhancing the product.
As you’ve pointed out times have moved on. With integrated SaaS you get to choose the best vendor for each function and because it’s pre-integrated it’s a doddle to get going. It’s also a great way to keep the pressure on vendors because it’s easier to swap one function such as CRM to a new vendor than it is to switch a single monolithic system. Certainly keeps us SaaS vendors focused!
Duncan Stockdill, Javelin CRM