By Laura Cristobal Boyer, former Sr. Product Manager at 15five
Let’s be honest: integrations aren’t exactly the sexiest part of Product. But they might be the most underrated.
The most impactful project I’ve ever led started with a simple, frustrating problem: our integrations were broken. And it was costing us customers.
The Pain Behind the Promise
At the time, we were facing growing customer frustration around manual data entry. Even the companies that had some form of integration were dealing with brittle, limited setups that created as many problems as they solved.
Internally, it was worse: customer onboarding dragged on. Support teams were constantly dealing with sync errors. And engineering had become the unofficial integrations help desk.
Then we uncovered a staggering stat: customers without integrations were churning at six times the rate of those with them.
That’s when it became clear: this wasn’t just a backend problem. It was a retention problem, a scale problem, and a reputation problem.
Rethinking the Approach
I was asked to “fix integrations,” but I knew it had to be more than patching holes. We needed a foundation that could serve as connective tissue between our customers’ systems of record and our system of action.
Rather than building 30+ one-off integrations in-house, we partnered with a unified API platform. My team and I architected a system that could sync employee data, such as job titles, managers, and org structure, every 24 hours. It supported user provisioning, custom attribute mapping, and even historical data syncs for deactivated employees. The whole setup process took most customers under 15 minutes.
Admittedly, it wasn’t plug-and-play. Many customers didn’t have sandboxes nor clean data to work with. So we had to overcome these pain points. We built internal tools to support messy real-world scenarios and worked hand-in-hand with support, implementation, legal, and DevOps to roll it out smoothly.
Real Impact, Real Voices
Within a year, we had launched over 12 integrations, covering 90% of the HRIS platforms our customers used. The impact was immediate:
60%+ of our customers started syncing data regularly
Churn dropped for previously at-risk segments
Support tickets fell by 50%
Time-to-value improved by 20%
Our win rate tripled among integration-ready prospects
Watching customer after customer connect their HRIS and say, “That was it?” felt like a huge win. Not because it was flashy, but because it just worked!
“This is the easiest integration I’ve done, congratulations there. It was pretty straightforward. The guide was step-by-step and amazing.” — HR Ops Leader, Financial Services Company (Workday)
“That was a lot easier than I thought. Probably one of the easiest integrations we’ve had. So that’s great!” — VP of People, Media Company (Paylocity)
“I went through the guide more than the video, just step by step, and it was self-explanatory for me.” — People Systems Admin, Tech Company (UKG)
We didn’t just fix a system. We gave our customers back hours of time and gave our teams a foundation they could trust. The integration became a pillar for performance management, onboarding, engagement, and retention, all because the right data was always where it needed to be.
Why It Mattered
This wasn’t the flashiest project I ever led, but it was one of the most impactful. It made the rest of the product better. It helped us operate more like a data-driven company. And it gave us a scalable path to delivering on our product promises.
And personally? It was a turning point. The success of this project led to several promotions and solidified my love for solving the kinds of messy, systemic problems that quietly change everything.
What I Learned About Building Integrations That Scale
For PMs who haven’t worked on integrations before, or who might be about to take one on, here are a few lessons I’d pass along:
1. Don’t treat integrations as just technical work.
It’s easy to think of them as back-end plumbing, but integrations directly impact onboarding, support load, retention, and trust. They are Product.
2. Design for flexibility from the start.
Every customer’s HRIS setup (or alternative tool) is different. Building in custom mapping, preview modes, and self-service capabilities early helped us reduce long-term complexity and support overhead.
3. Work closely with customer-facing teams.
Some of our most valuable insights came from support and implementation, (i.e., how many customers didn’t have sandboxes or clean data). These realities shaped what we built.
4. Integration UX matters more than you think.
Even the best technical system fails if customers can’t set it up. We invested in detailed guides and preview tools, which paid off in faster onboarding and fewer tickets.
5. Plan for maintenance, not just launch.
Integrations are not “set it and forget it.” We had to build tools for error handling, sync history, and field mapping updates, otherwise things would break quietly over time.
6. Treat vendor relationships like product partnerships.
If you’re using a third-party API provider, your success depends on their responsiveness, roadmap, and documentation. Choose carefully, and stay close.
I now run Lean Product Lab, where I partner with early-stage founders to help them unlock product-market fit, often by solving unsexy but critical problems just like this one. Because features come and go…but the right systems? They scale.