SaaS Integration: Concur Technologies

Concur Technologies is a provider of expense management tools--delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS)--that support corporate travel booking, expense report automation, reimbursement and reporting, and corporate credit card integration. With solutions for medium to large businesses, small businesses as well as mobile devices, Concur streamlines the expense management process for its customers.

As with other SaaS applications, however, Concur loses business value when it isn’t integrated with other systems and applications. To maximize workflows and align IT with business processes, Concur offerings needs to be connected with ERP and HR applications, whether delivered as SaaS or traditional desktop software.

Application integration, in fact, has become a major problem facing SaaS vendors and cloud adopters as the increased number of deployments leads to cloud silo proliferation. In order to minimize these disparate cloud silos, SaaS to SaaS and SaaS to enterprise integration is essential.

For enterprises looking to integrate Concur with other SaaS or on-premise legacy systems, what solutions are available? This article takes a look at a few approaches.

Concur Integration via Custom Coding

Although the number of SaaS offerings has grown quickly in recent years, integration solutions have not always kept pace, due to the fact that integration was often treated as an afterthought when SaaS first became popular. The result of this is that many early SaaS adopters had to resort to writing custom code to connect their SaaS applications with other systems.

Some organizations still rely on custom coding to integrate SaaS. The advantage of custom coding is that connectors can be developed for specific integration patterns and use cases, such as Constant Contact integration or DemandTec integration. Concur facilitates this process by publishing APIs and web services that enable customers and third party developers to develop new applications.  Custom coding, however, has several disadvantages that undermine the benefits of deploying SaaS:

• High Costs and Time Investment: The tedious and complex nature of writing custom code means that developers can spend weeks and months on an integration project, slowing down “go live” times and diverting attention from other IT projects. When outside contractors are consulted, project costs can skyrocket.
• Technical Complexity: Customized SaaS integration requires the specialized skills and knowledge of experienced developers. This means that companies must depend heavily on technical personnel to write custom integrations while limiting the role of non-technical employees such as business analysts, further delaying deployment times.
• Scalability and Flexibility: While writing custom code makes sense for smaller and relatively simple architectures, it quickly becomes unsustainable as an overall approach to integration when enterprise systems increase in size and complexity. As the number of SaaS applications increases, new connectors need to be written by hand as well.
• Maintenance and Upgrades: Custom integrations require on-going maintenance and upgrades in order to continue running properly. Each time Concur rolls out a new version of its SaaS application, existing connections may need to be upgraded. When you have a large number of connections in a spaghetti integration architecture, maintenance quickly becomes a huge headache.

Mule iON: Integration for the Cloud Era

Mule iON is a cloud-based Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) that supports cloud integration in a simple, secure, and flexible way. With a rich library of ready to use cloud connectors, MuleiON is the easiest way to integrate Concur and other SaaS applications, eliminating the need for writing custom code.

When it comes to SaaS and cloud integration, Mule iON stands apart from other solutions:

• iApps: Mule iON provides essential integration tools for SaaS vendors, system integrators and SaaS customers alike through iApps. iApps are packaged integration applications that are built and shared through Mule iON. With iApps, end users can take advantage of a wide range of off-the-shelf connectors for popular SaaS offerings while system integrators and in-house developers can leverage the Mule iON platform to build and share integrations for specific use cases without repetitive coding. As the #1 barrier to sales, SaaS vendors can gain a competitive edge by using Mule iON to quickly and easily develop integration solutions for customers.
• Secure Data Gateway: Because cloud integration includes cloud to premise as well as cloud to cloud integration, Mule iON features a Secure Data Gateway that enables developers to integrate Concur with legacy enterprise systems that reside on premise. This helps break down the “cloud silo” created by deploying Concur and other SaaS applications.
• Monitoring and Visibility: Mule iON also includes a browser-based management portal that provides deep visibility into integration flows and messages for monitoring uptime and performance. These monitoring and management capabilities allow Mule iON users to identify errors and performance issues and ensure that integrations operate smoothly
• Cloud Features: Like other cloud-based applications and platforms, Mule iON includes core cloud features, such as multi-tenancy for data isolation and security, self-service provisioning, elasticity, and a flexible pricing structure.