After some considerable prodding from the Sales team to help advance the largest deal in the pipeline, I decided to formally assess the key vendor integration options that could help us win the business.
It is rare that any single product can wholly satisfy a customer's needs and quite common that multiple products will be used in concert to get the job done. Cloud-based products for example, like the one my company offers, are often combined to accomplish set of use cases. Think of opening your Dropbox files in Microsoft Office 365 to make changes. Or pulling Flickr photos into a Slack channel to help the team troubleshoot a problem.
Through an investment in both SOAP and REST APIs, we have made our cloud product open to integration as well. We often point partners (and customers!) to these full-featured web services when we encounter requests for functionality that hasn’t been productized. But since it may be necessary to initiate the integration from our end, we also provide hooks in the platform for outbound calls.
I’ve always been intrigued with software integrations. Part of that interest is derived from exploring the forethought that goes into making any software product extensible and the rest is observing how the combination of two or more products results in a new creation that may never have been seen before.
What drove this decision
Sales was getting anxious - more anxious than usual
We had been salivating over a large opportunity in the sales funnel, a big deal in the hopper - a hit-your-quota kind of transaction. For weeks, the Sales team had been working hard to address the prospect’s long list of requirements and to zero in on the areas where there was lingering concern.
This particular prospect was asking for more functionality than we could - or would ever likely provide. The Sales team was eager to determine whether another vendor could be introduced into the deal (always a risky proposition) to fill the functional gaps.
It was now my job to confirm whether or not this was technically feasible and if so, how it would be done. But in order to have all the parties understand the proposed solution which would likely be unfamiliar and quite technical, I was going to need to explain it with some pretty pictures.
The decision: Create a graphical model highlighting the integration points for the customer's use cases to help validate a new partnership
Joining the conversation late, I needed to orient myself to better understand the other vendor's product. I set up a few phone calls with both the vendor and the prospect, had some internal discussions with the Sales team, and scribbled a lot of notes. When I thought I had a good, initial model, something worth sharing, I polled each of the groups again, passing around a 1-page diagram where I had squeezed some boxes and lines together to create a crude chart.
These early rounds of validation prompted some tweaks to the diagram and I was able to tighten down the overall integration story. What also became clear was that, to make this happen, some non-trivial product investment would be involved on both sides. I knew we would soon be having a number of internal and external “business case” or ROI-type discussions and that the crude chart would not suffice. I decided to step it up and invest in a more robust model.
Plan of attack
My goal with this improved model was to capture and communicate the concepts that would best help with the downstream decision making. This meant not just determining the number of integration points to fulfill the customer's use cases but the relative complexity and level of effort of each, as well. Clarifying to all parties which use cases required which integration scenarios meant that we could better prioritize the relative work involved.
HIGHLIGHT the origin of each integration point
As I reviewed the use cases, I looked for places where the functionality of one of the products ended and where it needed to be picked up in the other product. This made it easy to determine which of the products would initiate a new integration scenario. On the diagram then, I drew uni-directional arrows between systems that are themselves, usually represented as fancy boxes.
I usually label the arrows with numbers or text to help direct the reader to the start of the flow. I also find it valuable to identify the “trigger” itself. For example, “a user clicks the upload button to start the process” or “the process is initiated when a user is added to the address book” or “each new PDF document added to the folder will initiate a call to the other system."
When more than one back and forth call is required to accomplish a particular scenario, the diagram get more interesting. Does the calling application wait for an immediate response (synchronously) or will the reply come back some time later (asynchronously)? What happens when the response never comes back - which party is responsible for resolving the loose ends?
Identify dependencies
In identifying the origins of each integration point, I’ve invariably highlighted new dependencies between the products. Dependencies must be evaluated carefully because changes to the callee’s interface will affect all callers. It is common for Product Teams to update their interfaces (we do it with our own web service interfaces) and must consider backward compatibility to minimize the impact on existing integrations.
For the sake of simplicity and because these would start to clutter up the sample diagram, I’ll skip over the security considerations, the deployment models (e.g. desktop, on premise, private/public cloud, etc.) and any differences in how each company licenses their products.
Identify alternatives for each Integration point
As the saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat. This can apply to product integrations as well. I always look to indicate any possible alternatives that I discover so that the decision makers can better evaluate the full range of possibilities - even if the alternatives seem less practical at first.
For each alternative, I try to include the relative levels of effort, costs, etc. I usually have a good reason for choosing the primary option so I spell out that rationale for my first choice. Included in the rationale could be viability concerns about the integration technology choices, the types of connection(s) required, overall speed/performance, error handling, etc.
Distinguish between what's available now and in the future
In this particular effort, I learned that some of the integrations would be dependent on features that the other vendor had yet to release. To highlight that important variable, I made special, prominent notes about what would be feasible today vs what was yet to be built to support the integration.
The impact
I delivered the updated, more formal integration model to the teams and continued to participate in the partner discussion for a few more weeks. After both vendors had settled on a viable approach, we jointly presented to the prospect. The additional work to provide an integrated solution was spelled out along with the additional cost, some of which would be subsidized by the vendors. The final proposal, that included a modified version of my diagram, was well-received.
I often create and share models like this to weigh important decisions. I find it easier to grasp the complexity of a proposed solution when you are able to visualize the number of boxes and lines. Unfortunately, a diagram can't always communicate the longer term return on investment of a product integration. It doesn't tell you how many customers will use it or when you can expect sufficient revenue to cover the implementation costs. But that's another article....
Look for more reports from theProductPath around product validation, charts, and product strategy here on PM Decisions.
To do my part in helping promote the company with external stakeholders, I decided to tune up my product presentation to deliver a compelling blueprint for the future.
The Product Decision: Prepare and pitch a more strategic product roadmap that could accommodate a broader range of business conversations.