Managing Integrations with No Code

- A Dev Talk Special Featuring Cyclr.

Here at the No Code Lab, we’re not just an initiative, we’re a collection of individuals and a network of ideas. That’s why it’s so important to host a wide variety of viewpoints. Here we a Dev Talk special featuring Daniel Twigg of Cyclr, to discuss his thoughts on using no code to integrate and embed ‘Integration Platform as a Service’ solutions.

Low code technologies have been disrupting the paradigm of development over the last decade. Driven by the need for non-technical users to be able to directly create, edit and manage complex systems, low code is unlocking increasingly technical and challenging areas.

From the ability to create custom personalised marketing experiences to building fully functional applications, third party low code tools are becoming more ubiquitous through lowering the required technical bar. However, the natural progression from this is the emergence of no-code toolkits.

These toolkits enable users to take ideas from concept, to design, to commercialisation. Enabling people to develop sophisticated software-based applications – but without having to have the deep technical knowledge of a developer.

Entrepreneurs are enabled to directly contribute to the build of their project, regardless of technical knowledge, creating products which are quicker to market and easier to maintain.

Commonly they use a visual interface and simple logic tools to facilitate your build.

The well known low code / no code platforms are the likes of:

●      Outsystems (app building)

●      Genexus (software development)

●      Caspio (database/app building)

…. and then there is also Cyclr itself.

Bringing No-Code to Integration

Integration has always been an inherently technical challenge; forcing developers to work across a wide range of non-standardised application protocols, API types and program specific quirks. Combine that with the ever-increasing number of SaaS applications on the market, which users demand integrations to, and it quickly becomes all-consuming for a developer’s workload.

No-Code and Low-Code integration platforms, such as Cyclr, abstract these APIs, providing graphical interfaces (drag and drop) to construct integrations - not code. This makes the integration creation process accessible to anyone with knowledge of the data flows that they would like to create.

The ability to boil down once complex tasks into a visual language makes the integration process more accessible. 

Scaling in-app integrations

SaaS platforms all seem to include built in integrations out of the box, but with the ever changing and growing SaaS landscape more resources are required to build out and maintain more and more integrations.

This has led to the emergence of embedded iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service), providing SaaS teams with no code tools to scale their in-app integrations, while enabling their teams to be more reactive to user integration requests. 

The No-Code tools open up the integration process, allowing them to directly grow their connectivity, as well as handle users’ bespoke integration requests, without diverting the developer’s resources.

Driving efficiency

Businesses all have their own processes and way of working - one size does not fit all. They have their own stack of applications, as well as their own ways of using them, so making them all work together is rarely something that can be done off the shelf.

The flexibility of no-code in integration tools removes the burden of integration building and maintenance from being solely a developer’s job to a role that can be fulfilled by individuals who work closely with the processes they want to streamline.

Their in-depth knowledge of the business case can easily be translated into fully functioning automations which can revolutionise a business; these include automations such as:

●      Sales - automating messaging/scheduling meetings based on where a deal is in a pipeline and the products/services associated with it

●      Marketing - ensuring lists are automatically kept up to date across systems, allowing for automatic checking of consent for each record

●      HR - automating the communication between applicants and HR teams, while ensuring all relevant data is in necessary systems

●      Accounting - integrating CRMs, ERPs and payment processors with accounting tools to automate the generation of invoices as well as streamlining the way payments are logged and handled

These kinds of automations are key to driving efficiencies, reducing costs and increasing data accuracy. All made possible through visual, no-code integration tools. 

If you need a low-code, easy to use, integration platform that empowers anyone in your SaaS business to respond to user integration, get in touch with Cyclr today, or to be next in line to have a guest feature on our website, talk to the No Code Lab team!