The beauty, and the challenges, of integration with SaaS
We have recently introduced two exciting integrations: Harvest and Freshbooks. The reception from our users was overwhelming, and made us realise the importance of communicating/integrating with other online software.
Apollo doesn't send invoices; this is a conscious decision on our side: invoicing is not "Just send invoices out", just like "Project management" is not just "A bunch of task lists". Implementing invoicing is a lot of hard work -- and that's why there are specialized programs that do just that.
Thanks to the new integrations available in Apollo, you can now interface to those programs within Apollo and invoice your customers for the time entries you logged within a project or a contact.
The good, and the bad, of integration
Integrations are great. Here are just some of the pros:
- They are easy to set up from an end-user perspective
- Users end up using the right tool for the right purpose
But, there are cons too:
- They have to be developed on a program-by-program basis. Apollo can talk to two different SaaS, but there are more out there that are not getting Apollo's love
- Some data may be out of sync or duplicated. For example, users will end up with their Apollo contact list as well as the separate Harvest/Freshbooks customer list
- Users end up having to pay for two different pieces of software
Keeping the conversation going
After seeing the great success of Harvest and FreshBooks, we will definitely continue down this path while trying to make the "cons" as mitigated as possible. It's certainly exciting, to be able to use different services and seeing them talk work together as a team, the way the computing world should always be.
7 comments so far
Rodrigo Bressane
Tue, 12/25/2012 - 01:22
It's great to see each cool step ahead Apollo takes. You guys rock. I hope integration with Curdbee is also in plans!
Alloy Marketing
Sat, 01/12/2013 - 03:11
Here in the UK - one of the biggest INvoicing software providers is FREEAGENT, who have just teamed up with Barclays - it would be great to see an integration with Freeagent?
Tony Mobily
Sun, 01/13/2013 - 12:07
Hi,
Passing this request on to the developers!
Merc.
Ben
Fri, 02/01/2013 - 23:47
+1 for integration with FreeAgent - that would be brilliant.
Lorraine Cummins
Tue, 03/05/2013 - 07:11
Apollo doesn't send invoices yeah good poinst,; and I appreciate when you say this is a conscious decision on our side: invoicing is not "Just send invoices out", just like "Project management" is not just "A bunch of task lists".
Ryan
Thu, 03/21/2013 - 17:41
What about option to be added to Zapier.com as a way of very quickly expanding integration options? any near future plans for this?
applicomhq
Tue, 03/11/2014 - 09:00
The Zapier integration is ready! We are testing it with interested users to get feedback, contact us if you'd like to play with it too.