SaaS Integration: SciQuest

SciQuest is a leading provider of SaaS solutions for procurement management and supplier enablement. Organizations in the education, healthcare, life sciences, government, and private sectors use SciQuest’s various on-demand applications to easily connect with suppliers and to save money by increasing on-contract spending.

SciQuest offers a range of modules to support procurement processes. With the Order Manager and Settlement Manager, enterprises can place, track, and process orders and automatically receive and match invoices to settle accounts. The Requisition Manager, moreover, automatically, creates and routes requisitions for approval.

Other SciQuest modules include the Sourcing Director, which supports bid management, and the Supplier Contract Management and Authoring, which streamlines the process for drafting and storing supplier contracts in a central repository. Users can also leverage the Supplier Diversity Manager to attract and onboard diversity suppliers (MWBEs) and manage supplier relationships with the Total Supplier Manager.

Users can mix and match modules depending on their procurement management needs or deploy one of SciQuest’s pre-packaged solutions. The company’s most popular solution is the Source-to-Settle solution, which includes the Sourcing Director, Requisition Manager, Order Manager, and Settlement Manager as well as the Spend Director Enterprise, an add-on for integrating suppliers and managing contracts, and access to the SciQuest Supplier Network.

SaaS and the Need for Integration

One of the biggest hurdles for companies currently deploying SciQuest and other SaaS applications is integration. When enterprises deploy multiple SaaS solutions their data becomes peppered across various cloud silos.

In order to maintain a competitive edge in meeting customer demands, enterprises need to connect their data and break down these cloud silos. Enterprises also need to integrate seamlessly across cloud services and legacy applications to support hybrid architectures.

Current enterprise SaaS users as well as those considering SaaS strategies should consider the following integration scenarios:

• Integration between two or more SaaS applications, such as RealPage integration or Responsys integration
• Integration between SaaS and on-premise legacy applications and databases
• Integration between SaaS and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
• Integration between SaaS and desktop applications such as Microsoft Outlook

Building Your Own Integration Solution

A common approach for addressing SaaS integration problems is to build your own custom connectors. For instance, companies with an experienced technical staff can develop their own integration code to quickly integrate different SaaS systems. When companies lack in-house integration expertise, they often hire systems integration consultants to perform the work.

The benefit of a custom approach is that enterprises can control what and how integrations are built and tailor connectors to meet specific business goals. Smaller integration projects in particular can be built quickly and easily without the upfront costs of buying packaged integration solutions.

There are, however, a few caveats to building your own SaaS integration solution. As applications integration projects grow in size and complexity, writing custom code can be tedious and difficult work. Moreover, custom integrations require ongoing maintenance and upgrades to optimize performance and maintain compatibility between systems.

Another downside to building your own connectors is that it leads to system volatility. This is because custom integrations are typically point-to-point in nature and create tight dependencies between systems. When one application is modified, it usually means the other applications that are connected to it need to be modified as well.

In short, custom SaaS integration solutions quickly become time-consuming and difficult to maintain. Enterprises need a quicker, simpler and more efficient way to integrate across the cloud and enterprise.

iON: Easy Integration for Cloud and SaaS

Mule iON is an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) developed to simplify cloud integration. Both a platform and a service, Mule iON supports a variety of integration scenarios and enables users to tackle complex projects in the most efficient way possible.

iON includes the following features:

• No coding required: MuleiON reduces the need for custom coding in two ways. Users can take advantage of a growing library of cloud connectors to quickly integrate the most popular SaaS applications as well as leverage the Mule iON platform to build custom integration applications (iApps) via drag-and-drop configuration.
• Secure Integration: Mule iON includes a Secure Data Gateway for connecting SaaS applications and on-premise legacy systems. The Secure Data Gateway allows users to access data located behind the firewall without compromising security.
• Hassle-free maintenance: With Mule iON, users don’t have to worry about scaling, provisioning, or infrastructure when it comes to integration. That’s because Mule iON takes care of these issues and lets users focus on building their apps.
• Visibility and Intelligence: In order to maintain optimal performance levels, users need visibility into integration flows. Mule iON comes with a management portal that provides critical intelligence for addressing bugs and errors and overall maintenance of your integrations. Best of all, the management portal is entirely browser-based so there is no need to download or install any software.
• Scalability: With Mule iON, you can start with a few integration points and seamlessly scale up to meet changing business needs. New systems can be quickly added without the hassles and burdens of building custom connectors.