SaaS Integration: SuccessFactors

For today’s enterprises, the execution of organizational goals from top to bottom is essential for success. SuccessFactors offers BizX, or Business Execution software for this very reason. Combining employee performance management functions with business strategy deployment tools, the SuccessFactors product suite enables enterprises to turn company-wide strategies into executable tasks.

Over 3,000 enterprise customers across 60 different industries--including healthcare, manufacturing, retail and consumer goods, financial services, high tech, government, higher education and non-profit organizations--currently deploy SuccessFactors solutions. Delivered under the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, SuccessFactors offers top-notch alternatives to traditional enterprise applications.

The Business Execution software suite encompasses a comprehensive set of integrated modules that support business alignment, team execution and employee performance. Business leaders can monitor and manage employee performance with SucessFactors’ 360 Degree Reviews, Goal Management solutions, and Performance Management and Calibration modules. The BizX software suite also supports core HR functions with Employee Central, a portal for accessing employee information, as well as Recruiting, Compensation Management, and Succession Management tools. The Learning and Career and Development Planning tools, moreover, enable companies to train employees and further optimize performance.

In addition to performance management and HR solutions, SuccessFactors also offers BixX Insights, Business Accelerators, Metrics, Reporting, Stack Ranker, Workforce Analytics and Workforce Planning, which give executives the information they need to make key business decisions as well as the tools to implement them. Finally, the SuccessFactors product suite facilitates social networking and collaboration through the CubeTree and Employee Profile modules and enhances accessibility with Mobile Applications.

SaaS Integration Challenges

Although enterprises are drawn to the on-demand provisioning model, elasticity and scalability, and cost benefits of SuccessFactors and other SaaS solutions like Salesforce.com, NetSuite and RightNow, such cloud services also present new integration challenges. The deployment of multiple SaaS applications, for instance, leads to the fragmentation of enterprise data into disparate cloud silos.

In order to eliminate cloud silos and make business processes more efficient, SaaS applications need to be properly integrated across the cloud and enterprise. This means connecting SaaS to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, SaaS to on-premise legacy systems, and SaaS to SaaS, such as Constant Contact integration and DemandTec integration.

For instance, SuccessFactors customers might consider the following as part of their SaaS integration strategy:

• Integrating SuccessFactors’ business execution tools with CRM systems to monitor sales activities and measure performance
• Integrating compensation and recruitment management functions from SuccessFactors with financials and payroll systems to facilitate the new employee on-boarding process
• Connecting recruitment data with background check services

Integration via Custom Code

While it is clear that cloud integration is crucial to the successful deployment of SaaS applications, finding a packaged integration solution can be a challenge in and of itself. This is due to the fact that applications integration was often treated as an afterthought when SaaS first started to emerge as an alternative to traditional enterprise applications. Thus, while the number of SaaS offering and vendors grew rapidly over the past decade, integration solutions have emerged more slowly.

Because of the lack of packaged integration solutions, enterprise users typically adopt an ad hoc custom integration approach to solve their integration problems. With this approach, companies rely on in-house developers and/or systems integration consultants to write custom integration code.

While a custom approach allows users to tailor connectors to specific integration scenarios, it also comes with several disadvantages:

• Time and Cost: Writing custom integration code can be tedious and require extensive time, particularly when you are working with large and complex architectures. The wide availability of APIs has simplified integration to some extent, but they still require the technical skills and expertise of developers and system integrators. Moreover, in-house developers have less time for other projects when working on complicated custom integrations and hiring system integrators to work on a project can quickly drive up costs.
• Maintenance and Upgrades: Once a connector is built, they still need to be maintained and upgraded regularly to ensure that integrations continue to run smoothly. Integration flows needed to be monitored and connectors need to be upgraded from time to time, especially when new versions of SaaS software are rolled out.
• Flexibility: Although custom integrations can be an easy fix when you only have 2 or 3 systems to integrate, it quickly becomes unmanageable when you have 20 or 30 (or more) applications. To maintain agility in the face of changing business needs, enterprises need a solution that can scale up quickly and is flexible enough to handle different integration scenarios.

iON: Integration for the Cloud Era

To meet the growing need for cloud integration, Mule iON has emerged. As an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS), Mule iON takes the complexity out of cloud integration, allowing users to quickly and seamlessly integrate SuccessFactors with other cloud services and legacy applications.

iON features a robust set of capabilities, including:

• Cloud Connectors: With a rich library of out-of-the box cloud connectors, Mule iON users can quickly connect to the most widely-used SaaS applications such as Salesforce.com and NetSuite as well as social medial platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. And since integration scenarios can vary from company to company, Mule iON comes with a development kit that is easy to use and allows users to build their own cloud connectors without needing to know the underlying application infrastructure.
• Drag-and-Drop Configuration: With Mule iON, custom coding is no longer required to perform integrations. Included with Mule iON is Mule Studio, which is a flow designer based on Eclipse that supports the development of new integration applications (iApps) using a drag-and-drop configuration approach instead of custom coding. This approach shortens the development life cycle and results in faster deployment times.
• Secure Data Gateway: Besides SaaS to SaaS integration, Mule iON also supports SaaS to enterprise integration through a Secure Data Gateway. This enables users to access crucial data residing behind the firewall without compromising security.
  Management Portal: In addition to core integration services, Mule iON includes a browser-based management portal. Providing deep visibility into information flows and control over integrations, the management portal makes it easier to identify problems and bugs. Best of all, you can access it in your browser without needing to download, install or configure any additional software.
• Cloud Essentials: Like other cloud services, Mule iON includes essential cloud features such as self-service provisioning, flexible pricing, multi-tenancy for data isolation and security and an elastic and scalable architecture.