Plan for failures
Connecting two tools can look simple: move a field from one application to another. In practice, the most useful question is what happens when something fails.
Imagine an enquiry moving from an inbox into a tracking system. How do you avoid recording the same message twice? What happens if the company is missing? Who notices when the destination is unavailable? Can the workflow recover without repeating every earlier enquiry?
Define handover and recovery
A useful integration defines the source of each field, minimum permissions and exception handling. It also provides a way to distinguish completed work from pending work. Automation without these decisions can make an existing problem harder to see.
Handover should include documentation, tests with fictional examples, recovery instructions and client control of their own accounts. Before changing a live workflow, keep a backup and agree how to return to the previous state.
Custom development is not always necessary. An existing feature or available integration may solve the problem with less effort. The aim is to improve the workflow at a proportionate cost and level of complexity.