We Asked SaaS Buyers Why Integrations Matter

Integrations are rarely the headline feature on your roadmap, but they’re often the reason you win or lose a deal. In our own research and in third‑party reports, 90% of B2B buyers say a vendor’s ability to integrate with their existing tech stack significantly influences whether they even make the shortlist. Yet in most product planning meetings, integrations still get treated like a “Phase 2” nice‑to‑have.

We wanted to go beyond the stats and show what this actually looks like in the wild. So we sat down with B2B SaaS operators, RevOps, CS, and partnerships leaders and asked them to share real stories of integrations that made or broke deals, shaped roadmaps, and quietly consumed entire weeks of their time.

This video is the result.

The data is clear: integrations have crossed the line from feature to requirement

There’s no shortage of numbers showing how much integrations matter. 90% of B2B buyers agree that integration capabilities influence whether a vendor makes their shortlist. Over half say poor integration with their existing stack is a direct trigger to start looking for new vendors. Other studies show integrations are now a top three factor globally in software buying decisions, sitting just behind trust and sales 

That shows up in commercial outcomes too. Customers are willing to pay more for products with robust integrations and are significantly less likely to churn when integrations are in place. In one recent analysis, buyers with at least five integrations in place were willing to pay around 20% more for the same core product because it’s better embedded in their workflows and data flows.

But statistics only go so far. They don’t capture what it feels like when an integration silently bricks your marketing automation system for two hours every morning, or when your “native” integration turns out to be a thin wrapper on a third‑party tool that costs you hundreds of thousands in pipeline. That’s what we wanted to surface.

When integrations go wrong, they don’t just annoy people — they destroy value

“We lost probably $200,000 of pipeline that we back‑calculated and had to switch platforms entirely as a result - Rachel Squire, CEO of Mobi Solutions

One theme that comes through immediately in the interviews is just how expensive “bad” integrations are, even when nobody is tracking that cost on a spreadsheet.

• Lost time and hidden operational cost
  Ops leaders talked about integrations that constantly broke, mis‑mapped fields, or created sync errors that only surfaced days later. Fixing those issues meant hours spent debugging with product and engineering just to get back to baseline. As one participant put it, it’s a “blind cost” that falls entirely on the in‑seat operator, who still has the rest of their job to do.
  
  
• Wasted pipeline and near‑instant churn
  In one story, a team tried to run sales outreach triggered from an ABM platform via what they thought was a native integration. Under the hood, it was actually wired through a generic third‑party connector, creating long sync delays and data issues. The result: speed‑to‑lead broke, they back‑calculated roughly $200,000 in lost pipeline, and the customer started planning to churn only a couple of months into an annual contract.
  
  
• “Designed in Excel, not in the real world”
  Another leader described an intent data integration that pushed huge volumes of data into Marketo in a way that made it effectively unusable. The API calls saturated the system so badly that Marketo was “bricked” for about 120 minutes every morning, delaying basic things like autoresponder emails for event registrations. The integration technically “worked,” but the impact on both internal users and end customers was disastrous.
  
  
• Broken experiences and partner tension
  We also heard about integrations that technically connected two platforms, but required 10 clicks, long waits, and clunky mobile experiences. Users quickly reverted to workarounds, which eroded adoption and created friction with partners who weren’t seeing usage. From the outside, it looked like a partnership win; inside the product, it was anything but.
  
  

These aren’t edge cases. They are the lived reality behind stats like “51% of buyers cite poor integration as a reason to explore new vendors.” When integrations under‑deliver, vendors don’t just risk a slower rollout — they risk immediate revenue loss and damaged trust.

The very first thing I look for is what cleanly integrates well. And if it doesn’t cleanly integrate well, then I’m cutting that tool. - Leah Russo, VP of Marketing at Clearco

When integrations go right, they become your moat

The video also surfaces the other side of the story: what happens when integrations are done well.

• Turning 11 disconnected systems into a single source of truth
  One customer success leader described managing over 2,000 accounts across 11 different systems — CRM, ticketing, subscription billing, and more. Before proper integrations, every customer call required hopping across tools just to answer basic questions. After implementing productized connectors that pulled clean, well‑mapped data into a centralized view, each CSM saved an average of seven hours per week and could finally spend that time proactively managing renewals instead of firefighting.
  
  
• Native, “just works” integrations that drive stickiness
  Several participants highlighted integrations that installed quickly, survived product updates without breaking, and didn’t require constant monitoring. Those integrations became so embedded in workflows that “you can never take one away without the other,” as one marketer described the Marketo–Salesforce integration. That’s the kind of stickiness every SaaS product wants.
  
  
• Being at the top of the shortlist
  On the partnerships side, we heard from leaders who regularly survey their sales teams to understand which tools prospects are using and where integration gaps are costing deals. When they do build the right integrations, they immediately hear comments like, “You’re at the top of our list of vendors because you have this integration and others don’t.” In a world where 60% of deals bring up integrations directly, that’s a critical edge.
  
  
• Creating a virtuous cycle of usage and expansion
  One partner leader recalled a favorite example where an integration connected into the workflow at exactly the right point. It didn’t just let users do more; it encouraged them to invite collaborators from other teams and even external partners into the experience, driving more usage, upgrades, and net‑new sales. A great integration didn’t just support the product; it expanded its reach.
  
  

This is the upside behind stats like “98% of companies say customers with integrations are less likely to churn” and “integrations drive a significant share of upsells and expansions.” When integrations solve real jobs‑to‑be‑done cleanly, they stop being checkboxes and start becoming your moat.

What buyers wish product and engineering teams knew

We also asked participants directly: if you could talk to the product and engineering teams building your integrations, what would you say? Their answers were remarkably consistent.

• Start with the job to be done, not the API surface
  Multiple participants talked about integrations that clearly hadn’t been designed by anyone who actually uses both tools. Fields were mapped in ways that didn’t reflect how the business ran, or critical objects were omitted entirely. The advice: deeply understand the end goal and the workflows on both sides, and don’t confuse “we can sync a field” with “we’ve solved a problem.”
  
  
• Aim for simplicity, reliability, and clear UX
  Complex integrations with opaque mappings and brittle bidirectional syncs create anxiety for operators who worry about overwriting rich data without realizing it. They called out the value of clear naming, tooltips in plain language, and bite‑sized videos or docs that explain how connectors work. The “best” integrations didn’t try to do everything from day one; they did the most important things reliably, then layered sophistication over time.
  
  
• Don’t cut corners to win a single deal
  One partnerships leader described scenarios where teams promised an integration for a deal, shipped a partial or manual backend version, and then let that “temporary” solution linger for months or years. Those shortcuts are felt by users and often turn into long‑term support burdens. Their advice: if an integration will be used widely, invest properly instead of patching something together under deadline pressure.
  
  
• Treat integration investment as a core line item
  There was broad agreement that companies should explicitly budget for integrations — in both engineering capacity and partnership strategy. Some teams set targets like “three partner/platform integrations per quarter” and align sales, partnerships, and R&D around that. Others have to fight to get integrations prioritized, only to find that by the time they’re shipped, the market has moved on. The message: integration investment directly impacts win rates, speed, and relevance in the market.
  
  
• Recognize that integrations are half the job
  One RevOps leader estimated that half of their role is effectively integrations work — designing, building, and maintaining the connections that power the go‑to‑market pipeline. That perspective echoes broader research: a significant share of organizations now rank integrations among their biggest product priorities. For many operators, integrations aren’t an edge case. They are the job.

Why Pandium cares about this problem

At Pandium, we work with B2B SaaS companies that are trying to build integrations at scale without sacrificing reliability, flexibility, or developer control. We see firsthand how often integrations are under‑resourced relative to the impact they have on pipeline, product adoption, and retention.

We built this video because we wanted to amplify the voices of the people living with the consequences: the marketing ops leaders losing hours to brittle connectors, the CS teams juggling 11 systems, the partner managers fighting for integration budget, and the product and engineering leaders trying to make thoughtful trade‑offs. Their stories put a human face on what the statistics have been telling us for years: integrations are no longer an add‑on. They’re core to a product’s success. 

If you’re a product or engineering leader trying to decide how much to invest in integrations this year, we hope this project gives you new language, stories, and data points to use in your internal conversations. And if you’re looking for practical ways to build robust, scalable integrations without derailing your roadmap, we’d love to talk.

Watch the full video, share it with your team, and then come chat with us about how to build integrations that your customers will actually thank you for.

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