The Plot Thickens

Write your text heScorpion is on a quest to provide end-to-end marketing attribution and ROI for its clients. A large part of this is collecting financial information and booking requests. Integrations are key to the quest, especially after our Operations field service management (FSM) being shelved when a deal was struck with ServiceTitan.

Extremely high retention rates were critical to the profit margin of the company. Thus, stickiness was a high priority. As a marketing/advertising platform, the company was developing additional touchpoints and integrations into the clients’ workflows to become more valuable and harder to leave. Real-time scheduling was an important part of the strategy.

This meant that we would need to integrate with the clients’ different CRMs, field service management (FSM) systems, and calendar providers to get a peek into their schedule and availability.

I worked with the marketing managers and sales teams to gather information about our clients’ toolings and compiled a list of 30-40 different providers we would need to integrate with. The company was also working on a few strategic partnerships that would take priority. However, after that list was completed, we needed a plan of attack for the remainder of the list.

Utilizing the information gathered, I worked on a weighted system of key clients, number of clients, client spending, and an estimated complexity of integration to prioritize the list of providers/platforms. To get to the estimated complexity, we needed two things, 1) a high-level understanding of the integrations, and 2) the technical approach to solution the request. Timing was a huge factor as pressure was coming from the top to get as many integrated as quickly as possible.

As a former developer, sorting through API docs is one of those weird enjoyments that I have, especially when they are public and well-documented. Unfortunately, more than a handful were guarded like the KFC secret recipe. I already had a good sense of what functionality we needed from each provider so I developed a spreadsheet of the functionality, the system, and the associated requests. I developed a workflow doc, showing the movement of data with the requesting calls, the values needed, and how the values related to other parts of the process. By doing this, I gave precious time back to the developers who could continue their work without having to do a lot of unnecessary legwork.

The Secret Sauce

Remember those "choose your own adventure" books? I created something similar, but for integrations:

• Built a weighted scoring system considering client value, integration complexity, and strategic partnerships

• Dove deep into API documentation (yes, I actually enjoy that stuff - don't judge!)

• Created detailed workflow docs showing exactly how data should flow between systems

But here's the real game-changer: I created a comprehensive spreadsheet mapping out functionality, systems, and API calls. This saved our developers countless hours of headache-inducing research.

Smooth Sailing

Before long, we had a well-oiled machine:

• Repeatable framework? Check.

• QA automation? You bet.

• Unit and integration tests? Of course.

• Developer frustration? Down to manageable levels!

The Big Win

The end result? We slashed integration time by two weeks per system, supercharged our scheduling UI feature in Connect, and fed our data science and AI initiatives with juicy, real-world data.

But the real victory wasn't just in the numbers - it was in creating a scalable, repeatable process that turned what could have been a nightmare into a smooth operation. Plus, our developers stopped giving me the evil eye in the hallway, which I count as a major win!

The moral of the story? Sometimes the best solution isn't about coding faster - it's about building smarter systems and doing the groundwork that makes everyone's life easier.