CRM or customer relationship management platforms are widely used by organizations to store and organize all client and prospect related data. Essentially, it acts as a unified repository capturing all relevant information, status, conversations, etc. giving a complete view into the prospect/ client relationship history with the organization. While CRM in itself brings several benefits to its users, when connected with other applications, it can unlock a range of new possibilities, facilitating automation, efficiency, accuracy and much more.
CRM API integration enables organizations to either connect and sync their CRM with other software applications they use, or allows them to connect their product with third party CRM that their end customers use. The overall objective is to foster seamless data exchange and sync between the CRM and other applications. Organizations commonly seek CRM API integration with email marketing platforms, e-commerce platforms, ticketing solutions, etc., however, the real-world use cases are many more. Once integrated, all the connected applications have real-time access to the latest customer information and conversion status, facilitating the sales and engagement process. Overall, it saves a lot of time for sales, marketing, finance, operations and other teams and yields greater productivity and customer experience.
The article seeks to provide an in-depth understanding of the CRM API integration landscape, illustrating the technical as well as business aspects which can lead to organizational success. With expert insights, it will cover the use cases, benefits, challenges step by step processes and much more that can help organizations accelerate their CRM API integration journey.
Benefits of CRM API Integration
CRM API integration brings along several benefits, which have a direct impact on businesses. These include:
Centralized customer information & faster GTM
With CRM API integration, businesses are able to accelerate their time to market with a more efficient go-to-market strategy. It ensures that all customer information is available in a centralized manner. When all go-to-market teams, including, sales, marketing, and others are able to share leads and status in real time and effectively, they feel more empowered and are able to thrive. This leads to faster customer acquisition, greater retention and revenue generation.
Prevents human errors
CRM API integration ensures that all customer related information is updated across all connected platforms in real time. This automated workflow prevents any human errors in capturing the necessary information. For instance, with manual data entry, if the buying potential of a lead is captured incorrectly, due to human error, it can lead to flawed targeted marketing, resulting in diminished customer interest and missed opportunities. CRM API integration ensures that all information that passes through the integrated systems is accurate and error free.
Streamlined sales productivity
With automated exchange of information, sales and sales support teams are better able to focus on customer acquisition and retention. Since they do not have to spend time updating information across different platforms and have real time access to updated status, they can allocate their time to sales intensive tasks which lead to lead generation and conversion.
Better customer experience
When businesses offer CRM API integration functionalities to their end customers, they benefit from a superior customer satisfaction and experience quotient. This primarily stems from the fact that when you provide CRM integration, customers consider the product to be more valuable, saving their time and allowing them to close their deals faster. Also, when customers don’t have to manually share information with your product, they find using it more convenient and pleasant, leading to greater customer retention.
Higher closure rates and market expansion
For customer facing CRM API integration, one of the key benefits is the potential for market expansion and higher closure rates. When customers are evaluating your product against other competitors, the functionalities and add-ons offered are considered. Offering integrations, especially with CRM (a basic system that almost all businesses use), becomes a key differentiating factor. This enables businesses to not only tap into a bigger pool of customers, but also leverage high sales closure, making customers willing to adopt your solution.
CRM API Data Models Explained
To leverage CRM API to integrate data across software applications that you use or are providing, it is important to understand some of the key concepts, data models or terminologies that are used. Each of these concepts has specific data schemas associated with them which we will discuss in the subsequent section.
Contacts vs Leads
While many concepts will be different and unique across different CRM that you might come across, there are a few which are generally consistent. Contacts is one such concept. Essentially, Contacts refers to the unique users that you add to a CRM around which you wish to maintain the data or information. Each Contact may be associated with an Account or a company they most closely relate to.
While Contacts is the most common concept, many CRM also have the concept of a Lead, which aren’t necessarily associated with any Account. They are generally raw data of people you add, which once qualified are converted to Contacts.
Custom Objects and Fields
One of the key characteristics of CRM is its potential for customization. Depending on the nature of your business and function, you can add or create custom objects and fields on standard objects to collect the information in a way that makes sense for your business.
Within each of the concepts mentioned above, there are CRM API data schemas that ultimately guide the information flow and facilitate integration. While there will be a lot of data beyond this as well, here are some CRM API data schemas that can help you get started with CRM integration.
As mentioned, the core of any CRM will be Contacts, which are primarily all users or entries you have in your CRM against which you will capture key information or data. Generally, a Contact has data in the form of name, email address, postal address, phone number, unique user ID, etc. In addition, there can be custom fields which can be used to capture additional information relevant to the business. A Contact might be linked to an Account or might be an Opportunity if it is a part of an ongoing sales conversation.
A related concept for the CRM API mentioned above is Leads. Leads are generally captured early on in the CRM sales process. They are eventually converted to Contacts when they are qualified with more information. A Lead is generally a sole entity and is not associated with any Account or Opportunity. The data schemas for Leads are similar to Contacts, including name, email address, postal address, phone number, unique user ID, etc.
Next, we have Accounts. Accounts are primarily the companies or organizations that are a part of your CRM. Contacts are often associated with the Accounts. Normally, each Account can have multiple Contacts associated with it, considering the CRM owner might be interacting with or wants to store data of more than one person in a particular Account. The data schemas for Accounts are more macro in nature and include company name, industry, location, website, business address, number of employees, founded in, etc.
Finally, there are Opportunities, especially in a sales CRM, which help the sales representatives to keep track of the sales funnel and facilitate a smooth conversion process. Any types of subscriptions or purchase processes are captured as Opportunities. Each Opportunity is associated with either an Account or a Contact to get access to the information about the respective stakeholder. The data schema for Opportunities focuses on the size of the deal, name of the sales representative or the person leading the deal, status of the deal, expected revenue, reference, close date, etc.
In addition to these data schemas for different concepts, there is a data schema of notes which can be associated with all of these concepts of Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities. Essentially, notes contain updates and latest information on the status of each of the concepts and are important for capturing developments in the relationship.
CRM API Integration Best Practices for Developers
CRM API integration, while highly beneficial, can be a daunting task for developers to build and maintain. To help address the same, we have created a repository of best practices that developers can adopt to make the process seamless.
Define CRM API integration goals and priorities
It is important to start with clearly defining the goals you wish to achieve with CRM API integration. Both internal and customer facing CRM API integration can have a variety of goals and use cases. Having clarity on what you wish to achieve with the same can help strategize the development process. Similarly, when building CRM API integration in-house, it is advised not to boil the ocean at once. This means identifying the top CRM APIs you want to integrate with and starting the process. You can gradually add more CRM applications to your repository, but start with the priorities which your employees and customers demand.
Understand CRM data models and get access to API documentation
Once your goals and priorities are clear, it is imperative to understand the CRM right from the protocols, data models, syntax, etc. While developers have the technical knowledge to build integrations, the domain specific understanding of the fields, data models, etc. can require a steep learning curve. However, without the same, building and maintaining integrations can be difficult. To facilitate the same, developers must focus on getting access to API documentation. Invariably, building any integration requires its knowledge bank, i.e. the API documentation.
Test your CRM API integrations rigorously
CRM API integration needs to be tested comprehensively across use cases. Testing ensures that any potential errors or challenges are proactively identified and resolved, facilitating the integration to work as intended. Choosing a network request mocking library for testing can be highly beneficial as they stimulate real world network interactions for robust testing. You can isolate testing scenarios and even test error handling practices, for a 360-degree evaluation. At the same time, testing needs to be done with realistic data to ensure that your system and the error handling mechanisms are able to validate and manage the different types of real data that comes in.
Implement strong identity and access management
Since each CRM is a huge data bank of customer information and intel, strong identity and access management is critical to comply with data privacy laws and maintain customer confidentiality and trust. Multi factor authentication (MFA), auditing capabilities, centralized access controls all together can help limit the data exchange access to those concerned.
Manage versioning and backward compatibility
While building and maintaining CRM API integrations, developers need to ensure that they are able to manage versioning and backward compatibility. Invariably, as there are updates to the CRM, the third-party APIs will have newer versions, and the older ones will become deprecated. Semantic versioning, versioning via URL or header, specifying deprecation periods, etc. are a few ways to manage versioning for developers. Furthermore, backward compatibility can help ensure that any changes to third-party API doesn’t disrupt any existing functionalities. This also helps ascertain that any disruption is quickly fixed and is compatible with your systems.
Monitor CRM API integration performance and health
After development and testing, it is vital to constantly monitor the performance and health of the CRM API integration. This involves constantly ensuring that the integration is working the way it should via detailed logs, issue configuration, etc. Monitoring API integration performance and health regularly can help detect issues like slow response rate, high error incidence, data retrieval inconsistencies proactively. In fact, response time, latency, throughput rates, etc. can all be effective KPIs that developers can leverage to ensure high performing integration solutions to users.
Implement retry patterns
Another best practice for developers working on CRM API integration is the need to implement retry patterns. Due to rate limits and throttling, some API calls may not go through, leading to loss in information exchange. Retry mechanism along with exponential backoffs facilitate automatic retries, but minimize the overload from failed requests. Overall, implementing this can help developers ensure maximum data sync, without increasing rate limits with API providers.
Popular CRM APIs
Based on the purpose they fulfill and the function they serve, CRM APIs can be divided into a few types. As businesses become more and more niche with specific requirements for each business vertical, CRM APIs have emerged which specifically cater to a particular function or role, leading to segments or categories within the CRM market.
Sales CRM API
Primarily used to keep a track of and manage potential customers during the sales process. Focuses on capturing all conversations, requirements and other important information for relationship building and eventual conversion to a customer.
Top sales CRM: Salesforce, SAP, Freshsales, Monday Sales, Zoho
Marketing CRM API
Focuses on seamless marketing management across campaigns, communication to ensure that all emails, other communication is sent appropriately. Helps organizations find new leads faster and nurture prospects better. Facilitates capturing and analyzing customer data and design marketing campaigns accordingly, powered by automation as well.
Top marketing CRM: Mailchimp, Hubspot, Adobe Marketo, Nutshell
Customer Support CRM API
Ensures customer success by tracking and resolving all customer requests and complaints on time. Helps address queries fast and seamlessly by presenting all information at one place along with historical conversations. Adds efficiency to customer success and aids alignment.
Top customer support CRM: Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud, Zoho, Dynamics 365 for Customer Service
eCommerce CRM API
Facilitates tracking and nurturing of customers following the online sales and transaction process. Helps manage customer information, purchase behavior and other analytics data. Collects all data about customer interaction on your website/ eCommerce platform.
Top eCommerce CRM: Pipedrive, Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Capsule
HR CRM API
Enables HR teams and recruiters to keep track of all data and information related to hiring. Helps capture conversations and relationships with candidates, identify and track open positions.
Top HR CRM: DarwinBox, Workday HCM, Zoho
CRM API Use Cases: Real-World Examples
CRM API or CRM integration can help leverage the data and information captured to facilitate better business outcomes. In fact, many leading companies can use CRM API data to power their operations across:
Prospect nurturing
As the CRM API captures all critical information, it has access to details about important dates and events for each potential customer. CRM API integration with gifting and other lead nurturing platforms can help trigger incentives and other reinforcements for customers based on the information stored. For instance, CRM integration with a gifting platform can be trained to automatically send flowers or gift cards to each prospect in a particular segment for their birthday or any other event. Similarly, it can be used to acknowledge existing customers and clients by celebrating their anniversaries with the company, etc.
Example: Xoxoday, Sendoso, Alyce, Reachdesk
Lead management
Most sales people have conversations with prospective customers across different platforms, including email, chat, social networking sites, etc. A CRM API can ensure that all conversations from these platforms are captured at one place, aligned with existing contacts or accounts or by creating new accounts and contacts as necessary.
Example: LinkedIN, Outlook
Schedule management
CRM API integration with schedule management and calendar software or applications can help organizations seamlessly manage meetings and calendars for prospect meetings and customer interactions. CRM integration with such platforms can help people directly convert their opportunities into meetings. Furthermore, CRM API can record meetings, which can later be routed to different sales owners/ stakeholders for next action.
Example: Calendly, Chili piper, Youcanbook.me, Doodle
Customer servicing
Your customer support teams are bound to get queries and complaints from your customers in the form of tickets and other mechanisms. If you integrate your CRM, these tickets and information can be captured against each Contact and even new Contacts can be added to specific Accounts. With CRM API all customer communication based on help desk and ticketing can be managed and streamlined for a better experience.
Example: Freshdesk, Jira
Communication
Since CRM is the sole aggregator of all communication, its integration with different communication channels is integral. This CRM API integration can help companies capture and store all communication and conversations in one place, which can then be used to populate and steer different conversations. At the same time, it can help keep a track of the conversation history across platforms for easier follow ups.
Example: WhatsApp, Slack, Teams
eCommerce experiences
CRM integrations or CRM API can highly streamline eCommerce transactions and experience. Integration between CRM and eCommerce platforms can help you track purchases, orders, communication to the customers and capture all customer preferences. Their preferences can then be leveraged to create personalized campaigns, custom communication and other functionalities for a better user experience.
Example: Shopify, BigCommerce
Legal and financial paperwork
Generally, conversations with potential customers can lead to successful sales, post which the paperwork and other formalities come into place. CRM API integration with financial and other onboarding tools can ensure that as soon as the status for any Opportunity is changed, the relevant documentation and paperwork process commences. Similarly, CRM can integrate with contract management and creation systems to facilitate the entire compliance part of a sales deal. For instance, any deal closure status change can trigger the sending of a standard contract to the customer via platforms like DocuSign to take care of the formalities and compliances.
Example: DocuSign, signNow, HelloSign
Customer engagement
CRM API integration can help you automate a major part of your customer engagement and churn management process. You can regularly gauge the pulse of your customers by connecting your CRM with survey management and other platforms which can be triggered to send surveys to your contacts at regular intervals. Furthermore, with insights from customer health based on tickets/ complaints and queries, such integration can also help you generate propensity scores for each customer for repeat sales and upselling.
Example: SurveyMonkey, Vitally
Marketing management
Finally, CRM API can help streamline and add efficiency to the marketing process. It can help capture new leads generated through different campaigns and even record preferences and other data to understand customer preferences. Based on this, it can understand the effectiveness of the campaigns and even assist in personalized communication for better conversion.
Example: MailChimp, TypeForm, Facebook
Common CRM API Integration Challenges
Now that the benefits, use cases and best practices are clear, it is extremely important to understand the challenges that accompany setting up and maintaining CRM API integration. Here is a list of the top challenges that most developers and businesses face.
Limited CRM expertise
One of the first challenges that most developers face with CRM API integration is lack of or limited CRM expertise. There are several terminologies, data models and technical nuances involved in using a CRM system. When it comes to building CRM API integration, it is important to have a fair understanding of these. However, this generally involves a steep learning curve which can be time intensive, but doesn’t add any value for a developer beyond integration development and building.
Limited compatibility between systems
The next challenge in CRM API integration arises from the incompatibility in data formats between different systems or applications. CRM APIs use different data formats (JSON, XML) and communication protocols (REST, SOAP, GraphQL). This makes data exchange an extremely complex process as all data across applications needs to be normalized, which is often cumbersome.
Expanding CRM ecosystem
The CRM ecosystem or the different CRM software are cropping up extensively. This turns into a serious challenge when offering customer-facing CRM API integrations. Each of your customers might be using a different CRM and hence offering integration for each with your product will be critical for business success. However, building one integration in-house can take at least 4 weeks and is slated to cost you ~$10K. Invariably, integration at scale becomes a rather complex challenge in such a case. On the one hand, it can delay your time to market, leading to missed opportunities. On the other hand, it may not even be financially viable to spend a lot on building and maintaining integrations. While this cost and time may be viable for building CRM API integration for internal use, scaling it for customer-facing purposes with the expanding CRM ecosystem is often not feasible.
Data sync consistency
Consistently ensuring data sync is an extremely critical and much needed aspect of integrations. Invariably, users expect that all data is synced automatically/ whenever an API call is made, without any glitches, in a consistent manner. However, at times, due to high data load or input data, users face sync failures, which leads to inconsistent data retrieval, defeating the entire data sync logic. The inability to ensure data sync consistency leads to a situation where data gaps exist and the information becomes unusable, unless synced again.
Difficulty in securing CRM partnerships
Building CRM API integration requires access to the API of the chosen CRM application(s). While some APIs may be publicly available and accessible, others can be more tricky to procure. Thus, this entails a process of securing partnerships with CRM vendors to get access to their APIs, API documentation and sandbox functionalities. In some cases, the process of securing CRM partnerships can even include undergoing long agreements which require comprehensive security reviews, negotiation over different clauses and might even require you to pay an annual fee for the access. Thus, getting access to these third party APIs can be extremely time and resource intensive, apart from the investment that goes into building and managing integrations once API documentation is received.
API documentation challenges
Even after securing the API documentation (available publicly or through partnerships), building CRM API integration can be complicated owing to the specific documentation challenges. First, the documentation at times can be incomplete or may be present in a language that is not known to you. This specifically happens when the application you want to integrate with has origins in geographical locations different than yours. Second, not every API documentation follows the same format and, hence, navigating it becomes difficult. Developers often struggle to find the piece of information they need. Third, in case there have been any updates to the CRM API, the documentation may not reflect those changes. Fourth, it can be extremely challenging to connect with the CRM API provider support teams in case of any queries.
Exceeding CRM API rate limits
Rate limiting and throttling are generally put in place with CRM APIs to ensure consistent integration performance. However, exceeding the limits can lead to specific challenges. Exceeding rate limits can lead to denial or delay in processing API calls or requests, leading to a poor user experience due to time out, error responses, etc. Furthermore, exceeding the rate limit repeatedly can also attract fines, penalties or restrictions on the CRM API usage. From an end customer standpoint, it can lead to reputational damage.
Building Your First CRM Integration with Knit: Step-by-Step Guide
Knit provides a unified CRM API that streamlines the integration of CRM solutions. Instead of connecting directly with multiple CRM APIs, Knit allows you to connect with top providers like Freshsales, Salesforce, Monday, Sugar CRM, Zoho CRM and many others through a single integration.
Learn more about the benefits of using a unified API.
Getting started with Knit is simple. In just 5 steps, you can embed multiple CRM integrations into your App.
Steps Overview:
- Create a Knit Account: Sign up for Knit to get started with their unified API. You will be taken through a getting started flow.
- Select Category: Select CRM from the list of available option on the Knit dashboard
- Register Webhook: Since one of the use cases of CRM integrations is to sync data at frequent intervals, Knit supports scheduled data syncs for this category. Knit operates on a push based sync model, i.e. it reads data from the source system and pushes it to you over a webhook, so you don’t have to maintain a polling infrastructure at your end. In this step, Knit expects you to tell us the webhook over which it needs to push the source data.
- Set up Knit UI to start integrating with APPs: In this step you get your API key and integrate with the CRM APP of your choice from the frontend.
- Fetch data and make API calls: That’s it! It’s time to start syncing data and making API calls and take advantage of Knit unified APIs and its data models.
For detailed integration steps with the unified CRM API, visit:
Knit's CRM API vs. Direct Connector APIs: A Comparison
Facilitating CRM API integration across different applications can be routed through different ways. Developers can either build CRM API integrations in-house via direct connector APIs or they can use integration tools, like iPaaS, embedded iPaaS and unified APIs like Knit’s CRM API. In the following section, we will offer a comparative analysis of accomplishing CRM API integration using two ways i.e. direct connect API vs Knit’s CRM API.
Learning curve for development
Direct connector API: Direct connector APIs require a steep learning curve for developers as they need to understand the API documentation for each CRM they wish to integrate with. However, this new knowledge doesn’t necessarily yield any major value add for developers.
Knit’s CRM API: Knit’s CRM API requires developers to learn the technical and operational nuances of connecting with only one unified API, significantly reducing the effort and time that goes into upskilling.
Multiple protocols and data models
Direct connector API: Since each API can have different communication protocols (REST, SOAR, GraphQL, etc.) and data syntax (e.g. customer_id vs cust_id), developers have to invest a lot of time in understanding the same and implementing this knowledge individually for each CRM integration.
Knit’s CRM API: When connecting with Knit’s CRM API, developers don’t have to worry about multiple protocols or data models. Knit takes care of all communication protocols and transforms the data into a unified data model across all CRM applications.
Authentication and authorization landscape
Direct connector API: Different CRM APIs follow different authentication methods ranging from OAuth, API key, TLS encryption, etc. Direct connector integration requires developers to learn about each authentication methodology.
Knit’s CRM API: Knit’s unified API relieves developers of the need to learn multiple authentication protocols as it takes care of authentication with each individual API, while developers only need to get acquainted with one authentication methodology.
Access to multiple CRM APIs
Direct connector API: When connecting directly with third party API for CRM integration, developers need to build point-to-point integration individually for each application. It is a 1:1 process and can be extremely long.
Knit’s CRM API: With Knit’s CRM API, developers can get access to a wide range of CRM APIs with a single API connector. They no longer have to build integrations with each CRM application they use/ their end customers use. Rather, Knit’s unified CRM API takes care of connecting with all CRM applications at once.
Data sync and rate limiting
Direct connector API: Developers often struggle with data sync consistency, especially in the face of rate limiting when they leverage direct connector APIs. Also, they need to keep pace with different rate limits and error handling for different CRM applications, causing unnecessary operational work to their schedule. At the same time, exceeding rate limits can lead to downtime and data sync errors.
Knit’s CRM API: Knit ensures 100% data sync consistency and guaranteed scalability irrespective of data load. At the same time, its retry and delay mechanisms ensure that no information exchange is missed. It spaces out the API calls to prevent hitting the rate limit. In case a rate limit is hit, Knit automatically and immediately responds to the error code, preventing it from becoming a challenge for developers. This way Knit ensures that data sync is not affected even during bulk transfer due to rate limits
Unified data normalization
Direct connector API: When using direct connector APIs, developers need to normalize data across applications as each one follows its own syntax, making exchange a challenge without transformation and normalization. Without normalization, data sync is likely to fail or may be achieved only partially.
Knit’s CRM API: Knit’s CRM API ensures automatic data normalization. It maps different data schemas from different CRM applications into a single, unified data model and syncs the normalized data in real-time.
Custom field mapping
Direct connector API: Accessing or using any non-standard data requires developers to code or build in custom logic, which requires additional coding.
Knit’s CRM API: Knit’s CRM API facilitates seamless access to any non-standard data you need, but is not included in the common data model for that category with Knit’s Custom Fields option. Developers don’t have to write even a single line of code to access custom CRM data models.
Time and resource allocation
Direct connector API: Building 1:1 integration with direct connector APIs is extremely time and resource intensive. On the one hand, building each integration can take 4 weeks on an average which can lead to delays in the core product roadmap and even increase the time to market. On the other hand, spending ~$10K on each integration can be highly expensive for businesses that wish to connect with multiple CRM applications.
Knit’s CRM API: As a unified API, Knit’s CRM API gives developers access to all CRM applications in a single go, in a fraction of the cost and time. It ensures that developers are able to focus their time and energy on core product functionalities, while the peripheral integration is taken care of. Furthermore, quick and cost-effective CRM API integration also facilitates faster GTM and market expansion for businesses.
Security Considerations for CRM API Integrations
Security is considered to be one of the primary areas of concern when it comes to CRM API integration. Since CRM contains customer information and insights, ensuring its security and privacy is of utmost importance. Not only is this security needed from a compliance and regulation standpoint, but is also required to maintain credibility and end customer trust. Here are some security considerations and best practices that businesses should keep in mind when it comes to CRM API integrations.
Credential and token management
Authentication credentials or access tokens are the backbone preventing unauthorized access. However, ensuring robust key management practices, secure storage mechanisms, and regular credential rotation is critical. Without appropriate credential and token management, businesses are vulnerable to unauthorized CRM access. Furthermore, it is equally important to regularly update API keys, tokens or credentials to prevent potential breaches. Token expiration policies can be extremely useful when it comes to securing CRM API integration.
Managing granular permission rules
CRM APIs must have granular control over permissions and access rights, clearly defining who can access what, for different roles and users. However, businesses often face challenges when they have to ensure a balancing act of facilitating privacy while maintaining fine-grained control. Defining and enforcing access policies are extremely critical in this case. These can help illustrate access rules, and prevent unauthorized access.
Data security and storage
This comes in specifically when you use integration tools to facilitate your CRM API integration. Most integration tools store a copy of the customer data, which not only leads to data security considerations, but also leads to additional costs in terms of storage. Thus, businesses should look out for solutions (like Knit) where data sync requests are pass through in nature. Such a platform doesn’t store a copy of the customer data, ensuring guaranteed data protection and safety.
Strong identity and access management
Implementing robust identity and access management protocols is extremely important. Comprehensive IAM policies and practices facilitate comprehensive user management, centralized access control, and auditing capabilities. These ensure that the identity of the user is verified at every step to prevent any form of malfunctioning access. Furthermore, all data should be transmitted over secure channels with robust encryption practices.
Security with Knit’s CRM API
When dealing with a large number of CRM API integrations, security considerations and challenges increase exponentially. In such a situation, a unified API like Knit can help address all concerns effectively. Knit’s CRM API ensures safe and high quality data access by:
- Complying with industry best practices and security standards with SOC2, GDPR and ISO27001 certifications.
- Monitoring Knit's infrastructure continuously with the finest intrusion detection systems.
- Being the only unified API in the market that does not store any of your end user’s data in its servers.
- Encrypting all data doubly, when in transit and when at rest.
- Facilitating an additional layer of application security for encrypting PII and user credentials.
- Using a detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page to monitor and manage all integrations and keep track of every API request, call or data sync.
Troubleshooting CRM API Integration Errors
Errors and exceptions in CRM API integration can occur and it is important for businesses to be prepared with troubleshooting best practices and redressal protocols for quick response and minimal downtime. More often than not, errors are generated due to server-side concerns, incorrect request parameters, network connectivity issues, or even authentication and authorization issues. It is extremely important for businesses to be familiar with different types of errors (404, 401, 400) and have a clear understanding and knowledge of how to prevent and handle them. To ensure robust troubleshooting in case of CRM API integration errors, it is important to:
- Ensure complete familiarity with the API documentation to have a clear understanding of the potential error codes, behavior and error messages for each CRM API. This knowledge will help promptly identify the error and provide redressal steps to the concerned teams.
- Capture all information that accompanies the error code or message. This will help get a better and complete understanding of the exact error and identify the best troubleshooting or error handling mechanism.
- Facilitate robust error tracking and monitoring. Ensure that each error is monitored with a detailed log to identify any patterns, recurring issues and challenges. This can help proactively address concerns.
- Implement an auto retry mechanism for transient errors. Complement this with exponential backoff to automate retry while minimizing the API impact and reducing the failed attempts.
- Focus on mechanisms and processes to handle rate limiting and throttling. While adhering to the limits is integral, in case they are exceeded, have a backup plan handy. You can consider implementing circuit breaking patterns to address rate limiting and throttling errors.
- Go beyond building transactional relationships with API providers. This refers to having open channels of communication that can be leveraged to address any errors that may occur which you may not recognize. Work closely with them and relevant stakeholders to address CRM API errors.
- Document common errors and handling techniques, focusing not only on how to remedy the error, but also covering the repercussions and altered behavior to help those dealing with the error in the future a clear understanding.
TL:DR
CRM API integration, both for internal use or as a customer-facing offering, has become a business enabler and imperative. By providing centralized access to all customer-related information across applications, CRM API integration is extremely important to impact the entire sales lifecycle for any company. Prospect nurturing, lead management, marketing automation, schedule management, ticketing, communication, legal and financial paperwork are just a few real-world use cases where CRM API integration has been facilitating business outcomes.
However, building and managing CRM API integrations can be a complex process. Right from the expanding CRM ecosystem to complexities in accessing and understanding CRM API documentation to challenges of incompatibility, data sync consistency as well as rate limiting and throttling, there are several obstacles that developers face when it comes to CRM API integration. Invariably, most of these challenges are faced when developers build integrations in-house using direct connect APIs. Fortunately, with integration tools like embedded iPaaS, unified API, workflow automation, etc., organizations can outsource the building and management of their CRM API integration. Thus, Knit’s CRM API has become highly sought after by developers as it has a lean learning curve, offers access to multiple CRM APIs at once, provides better security infrastructure and much more. Here are some of the top reasons why businesses are going after Knit’s CRM API:
- A single CRM API connector to connect with leading CRM applications in one go
- Compliance with leading security and regulatory protocols, e.g. SOC2, GDPR, ISO27001, HIPAA
- Double data encryption, i.e. in transit and when the data is at rest, along with an additional security layer for PII and credential management
- Bi-direction data sync with the option to read and write data from any app from any CRM applications
- Real time data sync with guaranteed scalability, irrespective of the data load or volume, with the additional functionality to limit data sync and API calls whenever needed, that too by CX teams
- 100% webhooks architecture that send out notification whenever updated data is available, removing the need for maintenance of an additional polling infrastructure
- Detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page to easily monitor and manage CRM integrations, facilitating integration health and performance
- Option to add custom data fields, beyond unified data models to access and read/ write non-standard CRM data
- The only unified API that does not store any of your end user data on its servers (due to its webhook based architecture)
- Option to fully customize the front-end auth component including text, T&Cs, color, font and logo on the intro screen
Knit’s CRM API integration is a definite first choice for most businesses looking to integrate with CRM applications. In addition to the factors mentioned above, Knit relieves its users from the worry of understanding and managing different communication protocols, data models and authentication techniques, allowing developers and engineering teams to focus on core product functionalities. By leveraging Knit’s capabilities, businesses can significantly accelerate their market capture at a faster pace, directly impacting their bottom line.
