Benefits of Web Integration vs. Secondary Applications

The digital revolution has overhauled the face of modern business. Automation, digitalization, and artificial intelligence have become near-essential to business processes, offering pathways for businesses to speed up service and production like never before. However, as single-purpose software solutions become outdated quicker than ever, companies have to juggle the costs of a constantly changing service landscape. But web integration can solve this dilemma.

Managing too many programs at once can quickly overwhelm your employees and stifle productivity. It can also generate duplicative data and workflow inefficiencies, which defeats the purpose of using software for your processes at all. By building an integrated app network, you can curb these problems and ensure a solid return on investment on your applications.

Let’s explore the benefits of web integration and see how in-platform integrated solutions vary from secondary applications.

What is Web Integration?

Web integration is the process of aggregating information from different websites, applications, and systems into a single hub. The practice builds an ecosystem that allows all your business software to “talk” with each other, seamlessly transferring data regardless of their make. In a nutshell, it serves as the glue that holds your diverse business tech stack together.

For instance, ScreenMeet, while offered as a stand-alone application, can integrate with a multitude of popular services that you probably already use in day-to-day operations, such as ServiceNow, Salesforce, Zendesk, and MSFT Dynamics365. It also comes equipped with Javascript SDK for development into other platforms.

Advantages of Web Integration

Web integration can benefit your business in a number of ways. From the obvious—working in a central hub—to the more indirect—increased productivity and profits. Your company stands to benefit a great deal from the transition. Let’s explore some of these advantages further.

- Share and Sync Information in Real-Time

Data is undoubtedly the currency of the current and future digital landscape. The latest estimates suggest that 181 zettabytes of data will be created, captured, and consumed across the globe by 2025. From names and purchasing patterns to client preferences and support history, this mass of data will drive businesses forward.

However, with such an influx of data, juggling disparate software solutions can make it more challenging to make sense of it all. This practice increases the chances of duplicates and inaccuracies; more importantly, it can leave your employees burning clock hours retrieving information. To truly make the most out of the data that you collect, you need to implement true web integration ASAP.

- Reduce Manual Data Entry and Transfer

Fully integrated business systems communicate with each other intuitively; you no longer need to manually port over data from one system to another. This speeds up processes significantly and minimizes the risk of human error.

- Eliminate Data Silos

Depending on the size and nature of your business, each of your company’s departments probably uses a different set of apps for their daily tasks. App integration can pull the data from these solutions into a single repository. As a result, you eliminate these information silos and ensure teams and departments can share critical information.

- Better Data Accuracy

An in-platform integrated platform continuously synchronizes data, instead of just periodically copying and pasting data to a main database. Instead, it updates repositories in real time every time you make changes. This ensures all team members see the same set of data, whenever and wherever they may access them.

- Speedier Workflows

Perhaps the most important benefit of app integration—particularly in-platform integration—is its convenience. It lets you share information and access different business app functions without having to leave your central hub application. This eliminates repetitive administrative work and cuts down time spent jumping from platform to platform.

- Enhanced Security and Compliance

Having critical company information on multiple software environments and devices does not bode well for data security. As web integration aggregates your data, you can tighten security and better comply with industry regulations.

- Enhanced Collaborative Experience

Companies around the globe were forced to pivot to remote service models during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, what was originally a temporary setup slowly positioned itself as the new normal for the modern workforce. As organizations continue to transition to building these remote service models into a permanent state, they need to find new ways to facilitate collaboration among teleworkers and office-based employees. This may entail bringing in additional cloud-based solutions like communication systems, IT service management platforms (ITSM), etc.

However, always remember that the more software you deploy, the more complicated processes remote workers can encounter. This is why you should first and foremost seek out any new tools with an eye toward integration capabilities. By planning your new hybrid space with a collaboration-first mindset, you can:

- Promote Worker Independence

A fully-integrated software ecosystem essentially creates a digital hub, with all your necessary applications on-hand at just one click. This saves employees the hassle of bouncing between various software just to access the tools that they need. This translates to less time navigating multiple systems—and more time to collaborate.

- Create a Digital-First Experience for Employees and Clients

Integration lets employees engage with each other and clients directly within your software ecosystem. For example, you can directly hook the messaging system up to your CRM platform to enable easier agent collaboration. Similarly, a help desk with an integrated screen-sharing platform can make issue resolution convenient.

- Make Issue Resolution More Comprehensive

Your newly unified central hub also serves as a single repository for issue documentation. Whether your IT team is handling service requests or your agents are tending to client concerns, the data is preserved and coagulated for others to review should they come across the same problem. This will shorten the issue resolution time in the future.

- Web Integration Enhances Omnichannel Capabilities

B2B and B2C clients may have different purchasing priorities, browsing behavior, and expectations. However, they do have one thing in common—the need for seamless, personalized interactions on any touchpoint they access. This is why omnichannel service is the future of business.

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, communication between clients and businesses has relied heavily on digital channels. Recent survey data from Pew Research finds that 8 in 10 consumers report using at least three channels to transact with brands in the span of six months. This makes it hard for companies to keep up with rising consumer expectations—especially if they are using an array of secondary applications.

Companies leveraging different, unconnected channels may struggle in providing consistent interactions—and clients and employees notice. In fact, in one 2020 study, 53% of consumers described their customer service interactions as “fragmented.” The study also noted that 59% of respondents felt they were interacting with disconnected departments, instead of one cohesive company.

These numbers only highlight why in-platform integration is so important. For example, ScreenMeet can help you enhance omnichannel capabilities by expanding the functionalities of your existing CRM and ITSM tools. It also partners with similar in-platform remote support systems, so that you can reinforce your tech stack.

- Consolidate Client Interaction Data in One Place

There’s nothing more frustrating for a client than repeating their whole story to a new agent every time they shift to a different communication channel. An integrated tool suite lets agents pick up the conversation right where they left off with clients. They can easily retrieve client history data with just a click, including any notes that the previous agent may have left.

- Fulfill Requests Across Systems With Ease

There are many times when a client will contact you on multiple touchpoints for the same concern, in hope of getting a faster response. With web integration, you can easily determine that the requests are coming from one person, and that you only assign one agent to fulfill them. Delegate tasks more efficiently—while also providing a better customer experience.

- A Bird’s Eye View of Interactions

By coagulating your data streams into one central hub, you gain a channel-wide view of interactions. Rather than “missing the forest for the trees,” as it were, you can survey the whole of the omnichannel experience across communication systems. From there, you can gauge how to improve your customer service further.

Better Workflow Efficiency and Optimization

The demands of the digital business landscape are not for the faint of heart. Companies must constantly anticipate clients’ needs, continuously work to improve products and services, and keep their thumb on the pulse of industry trends at all times.

With all this in mind, businesses of all sizes and types turn to software solutions to improve workflow efficiency. After all, tools can help agents and administrators optimize operations, or so the thinking goes. So, it only makes sense that the demand for more efficient systems is set to push the growth of the global computing market to $946.3 billion by 2026.

However, not all software solutions are created equal. For starters, not all platforms offer the same functionalities—so it pays to choose ones actually accommodate your current business needs. More important than that, is its ability to work with your existing systems. Otherwise, you might risk spending money on a system that just slows down your employees and make your workflow error-prone.

Choosing in-platform, fully integrated systems can mitigate these concerns. Built to connect with your tech stack seamlessly, they save your team the stress of lengthy onboarding processes and steep learning curves. They can also rest easy knowing their systems can work together so that users can have:

More Time for Attention-Demanding Tasks

Disparate systems can’t automatically sync information. Employees and administrators need to manually transfer files, check databases to retrieve information, and so on. Integration cuts back on these redundant tasks, so you can spend your time and energy interacting with clients and improving processes instead.

Simplified Processes

Web integration lets you bring all the features you need into one cohesive platform. This lets you optimize and accelerate how you perform your tasks, which consequently improves service delivery. Integration also provides a comprehensive view of company data, making workflow management easier than ever.

More Agile Workflows

Legacy software and secondary applications simply aren’t built to adapt to the changing needs of growing businesses. Using cloud-native, integrated tools can help you make sure your tech stack is scalable, so you can work smarter, not harder.

Find True In-Platform Integration With ScreenMeet

At a time when business processes are going digital, it’s not surprising that companies rely more on advanced software solutions. In fact, recent data shows that the average amount of software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps organizations use jumped from eight in 2015 to 110 in 2021. It’s never been more important for businesses to hop on the web integration train ASAP—otherwise, you risk getting left behind by the competition.

In-platform integration with tools like ScreenMeet can streamline your customer service and remote support workflows, minimizing the time your agents and customers spend bouncing between platforms for every little problem. Instead, they have omnichannel access all in one platform! Since ScreenMeet integrates with such a wide array of apps, it links up all your services into one hub. Cloud-based services also come with their own tight security protocols, safeguarding your company data even while reducing your internal stress.

Are you ready to move to a connected, collaborative business future? Contact ScreenMeet today to learn what a cloud-native, all-in-one customer support service can do for your team.