If a Tree Falls in a Forest with No One Around, Does it Make a Sound?

In the last blog post by Mike Alonzo, he clearly articulated the importance of experience. At boodleAI, we place a high priority on creating SaaS applications that excel in usability. We won accolades for our existing Guidon platform in terms of its look and feel. However, much like the sound of a tree falling in a forest without a witness, if we build a wonderful SaaS application but no one can access it, does it really make a sound? 

You may be thinking, “Isn’t a SaaS application very easy to access, as long as I have internet?” Well, this is true, but if you are unaware of its true potential and doesn’t have a way of integrating with our most used tools, oftentimes, it becomes just another unused tool in your tech stack.

You see, to truly unlock the potential of boodleAI’s predictive analytics, you must incorporate your organizational data to see the what really matters most to you – your people. Once you’ve done that, you are given a super intricate look at who your unique audience is, how they like to communicate, what they like to do, their purchase and donation likelihood, and so much more. Now, those insights are about to be so much easier to understand with boodleGPT on the horizon, but it doesn’t quite solve the ease of accessibility concerns I just mentioned. That’s where integrations come in.

There are tons of different shapes, sizes, and flavors of what an integration looks like, but we’re just going to focus on our two primary objectives:

1. Bringing data where it needs to be;
2. Placing our functionality where people want to access it

Bringing data where it needs to be

This may sound trivial in the age of internet.  However, in my decades of professional experience managing software system development, moving data from point A to point B has always been a challenge. With the continual advancement of tools and technologies, this challenge has been somewhat alleviated, but it is certainly not seamless, especially when managing it over a large number of connections. 

Therefore, there are approaches that we are planning to support:

1. ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load): The effective and efficient way to move a large amount of data, such as for an entire partner platform. It requires a higher degree of maintenance, as changes on either side of the integration will need to be addressed in a timely manner;
2. API (Application Programming Interface): The more flexible and reliable way to move data between systems. Though, it is usually less efficient, compared to ETL, when moving a large amount of data.

Placing our functionality where people want it

While we pride ourselves for making great user experiences in our SaaS platform, it is yet just another tool someone has to learn and want to access regularly. While thinking about how to approach this challenge, I can’t help but hear Miley Cyrus singing “I just want to be where the party’s at” from the once-popular hit Party in the USA. So that’s just what we are doing – becoming part of the party in some of the largest CRMs, eCommerce, and marketing automation systems. 

In the past, we hesitated to initiate these types of integrations because it is very costly to implement our sophisticated UI into other systems, and we needed to implement differently based on each system’s requirements.  The great news is that boodleGPT, being a ChatGPT-like interface, greatly reduced the complexity of the UI. The sophistication of our previous platform, which included switches, dials, and sliders, is now hidden behind the intelligence of the chatbot with a simple text-based interface.

Therefore, just like the most sought after flavors of ice cream, vanilla and chocolate, we are planning to integrate using two of the most favored formats, via:

1. Plug-in: an interface that allows our chatbot to sit directly inside a partner platform where we can take care of the entire experience. This will be a very expedient approach for a partner to incorporate boodleGPT capabilities inside their platform in a matter of days.
2. API: the partner platform uses its own interface and connects to boodleGPT via API calls. This provides a great deal of flexibility to the integration partners by allowing them to control the entire user experience, and perhaps even add another layer of their proprietary capability on top of boodleGPT. While effective, it does require a higher level of effort from the partner platform.

Summary

We are committed to provide multiple options to remove the barrier of moving data and to make boodleGPT available where users want it. It is a large undertaking to fulfill the vision, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.  If you are interested in integrating boodleGPT into your platform, we would love to hear from you and partner with you in this journey.