B2B buyers do not evaluate your UI in isolation. They ask whether you speak Salesforce, NetSuite, SAP, Slack, and their idiosyncratic data warehouse. A fragile integration strategy creates support load that looks like product-market fit until churn shows up. Build fewer, deeper, versioned connections.
Choose a portfolio, not a mural of logos
Integration tiers
| Tier | Examples | Bar |
|---|---|---|
| Native certified | Salesforce, major ERP, IdP | Joint testing, listed in marketplace, owned SLAs |
| iPaaS recipes | Long-tail SaaS | Maintained templates, not one-off zaps |
| Public API + webhooks | Everyone else | Versioned, documented, sandbox |
| Custom PS | Weird on-prem | Scoped, billed, with an expiry |
API design that keeps nights quiet
- Explicit versioning and a deprecation calendar measured in quarters, not tweets.
- Idempotent writes and cursor pagination.
- Webhooks with signatures, retries, and a delivery dashboard for admins.
- Rate limits that are documented and visible before the customer hits them in production.
ERP connectors deserve special fear
ERP objects have posting rules, locks, and multi-book surprises. A “sync customers nightly” job that overwrites the golden source will create finance incidents. Decide directionality: who wins on conflict? Mirror native validations rather than bypassing them with a service account that can do anything.
Conclusion
A SaaS integration strategy that scales is a small set of native, certified systems plus a boring, excellent public API. Version everything, respect ERP posting laws, and push long-tail connectivity to iPaaS recipes you actually maintain. Logos on a homepage are marketing. Delivery dashboards are product.