Which Tech Integrations are Worth the Investment in 2022?

Contrary to the myths of some software vendors, there are no large enterprises in the real world that use only one information system.  While it is possible to supplement the primary system, it may not be profitable or user-friendly.

There is also a large group of companies that consciously use applications from different vendors for various reasons. System integration, therefore, applies to virtually everyone. So, instead of asking whether to integrate, think about when and how and which program to use.

The benefits of integration seem apparent. Integration is understood as the automation of data exchange that eliminates multiple information inputs or semi-automatic transfer of information between systems. It reduces the number of errors as well as the costs. Furthermore, integration at the application level makes it possible to define chains of activities carried out sequentially by connected applications (Straight Through Processing). 

Science is an investment, and you need to care about the return on that investment

If you ever feel the desire to change your profession, you should consider the process of changing industries as an investment. However, you need to keep in mind that learning new technologies requires a lot of time and money (including in the form of rejected orders due to the lack of time devoted to science). Therefore, it is worth considering whether the new direction makes sense and brings a satisfactory return on such an investment.

In some areas of IT, you may need to spend a lot of money on the equipment you need to learn, or you can make money online. For example, if you want to master virtual or augmented reality software development - you usually need to invest in glasses, which can cost a lot of money.

Popularity has its price

A burst of interest in a particular field usually means accelerated development. More and more people start working in a specific field, and there is a kind of race to see who can use certain technology in the most creative way or propose new, revolutionary solutions for it.

This, in turn, often means that learning no longer makes sense at a certain point. New solutions can displace earlier approaches so quickly that our knowledge can be practically useless.

We have seen the world of machine learning. However, problems that were a challenge for an experienced engineer a few years ago are sometimes not even suitable as an exercise for a trainee due to the simplification of many processes and the existence of ready-made models that solve certain problems.

A few years ago, there was a real boom in frameworks in the front-end world. This phenomenon took on such proportions that it became popular among frontend users that a day without a new framework is a wasted day.

As usual, life has shown that in the end, there are only a few essential solutions in the world of frameworks - React, Angular, Vue.js. Personally, I think it's better to wait out this crazy period until the dust of innovation settles and only then decide what's worth investing your valuable time in.

Of course, it's like investing - the later we get in, the lower the return on such an investment, but the risk is lower as well.

Monopolization and investment risk

It happens very often that among many solutions to a similar problem, one of them starts to better adapt to the market and monopolize it in its way after some time. For example, this was the case with the jQuery library, which is still used today on many websites. A similar situation occurs with WordPress in the CMS market and is becoming more evident in the context of React in the world of SPA applications. Recently, there has also been a lot of talk about the fact that Firefox's the only significant competitor for the Chrome browser.

This situation leads to the fact that when we choose the tools that we want to master in learning a particular technology, we must consider changing them due to their decreasing popularity.

Of course, this is not as high a price as in the case of poor selection of the entire field of computer science we want to focus on. Nevertheless, it is worth paying attention to the current trends and the characteristics and history of a particular field to avoid spending unnecessary time learning things that may quickly become obsolete in the future.

Integrations that save time and money

1. Netlify

This time a treat for all developers and dev-ops - wonders on the stick of netlify.com. My first contact with netlify.com was about a year ago when I tested the gatsby.js framework. I decided to try one of the gatsby.js primers with the suggested "one-click install" at netlify.com. I must admit that what I found on this platform impressed me a lot. Netlify is a platform for management automatic "deployment" (continuous integration) of current web projects, which is absolutely free * (* up to 100,000 visits per month). I decided to share my experience with this service and explain why it is worth looking at this platform.

The first and most significant advantage of netlify.com is integrating the project via GitHub, BitBucket, GitLab ... For a full stacker like me, offloading work to settings and handoff deployment to an automated system is a fantastic time-saver. Every time we publish our main branch, netlify.com starts working and automatically creates a new site version. It is worth noting that new application versions are not overwritten, and a new version is created. We can always revert to a previous or even the first system version sent to the website through the admin panel or API netlify.com.

Netlify also allows setting up email or Slack notifications about releasing a new version, where, and when. The email can also include a link to the new deployment and older versions so that a potential test team can compare the current version to the old one. Surprisingly, Netlify keeps all of our versions of the application online.

We are not limited to just the master version. Netlify also helps us with secondary branches. 

Seeing such an app in action can be a great help in a production environment.

Netlify is like your own developer crew, working for you all day for free. Perfect for testing or as a very ordinary hosting for web applications. I am in no way associated with the Netlify company. I just think this is what a hosting platform for professional developers should look like.

2.  HubSpot

HubSpot to the system for automating sales and customer service activities with marketing activities, thanks to which two companies can closely monitor each other's impact and optimize certain processes.

Despite these capabilities, HubSpot has a vast database of contacts and companies. Anyone who interacts with your company can stay in touch with HubSpot. Contacts have filled out the conventions in the form of visitors who have interacted with Two Gender or potential customers who have been the subject of two events. A good database of contacts has allowed the Two Genders to register and collect their topics and provide up-to-date information.

What modules does Hubspot consist of?

Marketing - helps to increase traffic and the number of conversions resulting from a more significant number of visitors and effectively manages and monitors the impact of marketing campaigns.

Sales - helps automate sales tasks (sending emails to potential customers, call register),

Service - thanks to which you can introduce orders and improve customer service processes (notes, detailed data, reports),

CMS - is used to manage content create newsletters and landing pages.

Each of the modules is a separate tool and can be used separately. However, for comprehensive sales and marketing support, it is worth using the potential of all modules.

3. Gatsby

Creating a framework like Gatsby.js has brought many benefits to the developer community. The uniqueness of the individual solutions it is based on opens up many new development avenues. But, what is the world-famous Gatsby? Does it have any drawbacks? What effects can be achieved with the framework? Its phenomenon consists mainly of the combination of many possibilities.

What is Gatsby.js?

Gatsby.js is known as a generator for static pages. In other words, it is a web framework whose functionality is based on React and GraphQL. For fast and correct positioning of a website, the user must use pure HTML. When using React, the source code is extended with additional tags in most cases. If you decide to use Gatsby.js, you will get a simple HTML file. It definitely makes the work more accessible and more efficient.

Why should you choose to use Gatsby.js?

Many developers use the Gatsby.js generator for smaller and more complex websites. It is a perfect solution for those who don’t care about flashy website design, and instead value speed, adaptation to SEO requirements, and security. Besides, it's free - it works on an open-source basis - so it's worth working with it.

4. Agility CMS

Agility CMS offers well-known authoring tools for site management, review, sitemaps, content modeling, workflows, and content relationships.

If you need control over web and mobile content, Agility CMS is the right choice for you.

Developers can give you content to any front end, with Agility, using any coding language via the RESTful API, GraphKL, open-source software development packages, and Jamstack technologies.

CMS (Content Management System) is a website content management system.

CMS allows you to quickly, efficiently, and effectively modify and expand any blog, business card page, company page, portal, or landing page.

Thanks to creating cms systems, the time needed to develop the website has been significantly reduced. It is also easier to edit the content, intuitively, from anywhere, using any web browser.

The functionality of CMS programs

The primary function of the CMS system is the ability to manage the website by people who do not have specific IT competencies.

It is easy and uncomplicated to modify both the graphic and the content on your own. All changes are saved in the CMS systems to return to previously performed operations quickly. The activities carried out can be monitored on an ongoing basis, and the progress of the work performed can be observed.

The CMS system allows you to grant permissions to operate it to specific people and use it at any time and place where you have an Internet connection.

An Agility CMS solution can include:

1. Omnichannel and multichannel marketing
2. Enterprise-grade security
3. Content hub and knowledge base
4. Website is modern and SEO
5. Global marketing solutions (unlimited locales!)
6. Mobile apps
7. eCommerce and Ticketing
8. Onsite experiences, POS, Kiosks, Interactive, VR

5.  BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a platform that has many valuable features that easily create and maintain an online store. It offers users a complete set of online store-building tools, such as payment gateway integration, advanced marketing tools, reliable hosting, and security to support your stores.

Features

BigCommerce has one perfect feature worthy of all praise and admiration, which is increasing the goal. Everything on this site, from the moment you sign up, is about how to sell. I mean that even the Getting Started tutorial highlights related elements such as analytics, revenue, products, and orders.

  Bottom Line 1: 

  Everywhere Sell

To increase your sales, you need to integrate your store with different sales channels, and you can certainly do that with BigCommerce.

BigCommerce offers a handy channel manager called "Multichannel." It allows you to connect and sell your products in different markets. It will import your products to connected channels. So you don't have to add product details on each channel manually.

Offers sale on:

• Trading platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Google Shopping
• Social media like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram
• Physical stores such as Square, ShopKeep, and Springboard Retail

Once you have received a sale on any connected channel, you can process your order from the BigCommerce dashboard. It saves a lot of valuable time.

Bottom Line 2: 

Abandoned Cart Saver

This feature will send up to 3 automated emails to visitors who have not completed the checkout process. In addition, BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Saver can increase your revenue from unpaid products in your visitor's cart.

Here you can set up a series of emails and define when to send them. BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Saver is just a one-time setup.

Many customers leave our site with unpurchased items in their shopping cart. Over 70% of eCommerce shopping carts are abandoned before checkout. This way, we can get them back by sending some updated e-mails.

From BigCommerce statistics, BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Saver helps traders regain an average of 15% of lost sales.

 Bottom Line 3: 

 How to make your own promotion rules

You can personalize coupon codes and discounts for your stores. Additionally, you can display banner ads to promote these offers. The native system allows for easier creation and placement of advertising banners.

BigCommerce Discounts at the cart level. This means that the discount will apply to the shopping cart in real-time to avoid unnecessary complexity. 

Bottom Line 4: 

 Payment Gateways and Transaction Fees Lack of different payment methods   could result in lost sales.

Customers will look for a convenient payment method when making payments. BigCommerce doesn't block sellers with just a few payment methods.

More than 40 pre-integrated payment methods are available, supporting over 100 countries. In addition, the platform has native integration with PayPal, Square, Adyen, Stripe, Authorize.net, Klarna, and credit card payments (powered by Braintree).

As mobile wallet options, these are payment methods such as Amazon Pay and Apple Pay.

Depending on the selected payment gateway, there is a certain percentage of the transaction fee that the merchants have to pay. While BigCommerce does not charge any transaction fees, these fees are set by the payment processing provider.

Note that BigCommerce has no transaction fees for any of its plans. This is something good, and it stands out from the crowd.

Experience as capital

Learning has the advantage of recognizing more and more connections, correlations, and similarities over time. As a result, we build our knowledge base, and as time goes by, we no longer learn everything from scratch but immediately start at a certain level. Even more - thanks to the similarities to the solutions we already know, we remember the next ones faster based on analogies.

If we know one programming language, it is much easier to learn another one because we no longer need to understand the whole idea of programming from scratch. Instead, we know the differences and features of a particular language. You could say that we already have a specific skill level and no longer have to start from scratch.

Most programming languages have so many things in common that learning more is often trivial, and becoming a programming polyglot is not that hard. But, in many cases, you'll have to be anyway. For example, a back-end developer needs to know the language used to generate content on the server-side and, for example, the SQL language to retrieve data from the database. Or at least understand the gist of how it works if high-level solutions are used to facilitate access to the database). Often, these people are also required to have a fundamental knowledge of the languages used in the front-end.

So all the knowledge already acquired can be considered your capital, which can then be effectively multiplied. It is often said that "money likes money," It is the same with learning - the more we know, the easier it is to learn new things that have similar characteristics to the learning process.