Common Challenges of Building Multiple API Integrations

January 24, 2024

Building multiple API integrations isn’t easy. In this article, we discussed common challenges of building and scaling SaaS integrations and their most convenient solutions.

The complexity of multiple API integrations

APIs, or application programming interfaces, enable two applications to connect and seamlessly exchange data. APIs allow these systems to specify how requests are made and data is shared. The convenience of API integrations makes them a popular choice for SaaS developers.

However convenient, APIs are far from simple. Their complexity makes building and maintaining multiple API integrations challenging for engineering teams.

To understand this better, let's consider the HR and payroll integrations landscape.

The need for multiple integrations in HR

Today, an average HR tech stack has seven or more employment systems of record, including human resource information systems (HRIS), payroll software, benefits administration platforms, performance management tools, and so on.

The efficiency of HR processes depends on how effectively these tools communicate with each other. As a result, employers are increasingly prioritizing product integrations as a critical criterion before investing in any SaaS product to add to their HR tech stack.

The difficulty of API integrations

As of 2023, the U.S. has nearly 6,000+ HR and payroll providers. Many of these providers do not have public APIs. And the ones that do have hundreds of variations in their APIs, data formats, documentation, and integration protocols.

Understanding different HRIS or payroll APIs and then planning, building, testing, and implementing dozens or hundreds of integrations can take months or even years and cost millions of dollars—not to mention the ongoing maintenance required for all the connections.

Common challenges of building and maintaining multiple API integrations

Building API integrations is a complicated endeavor for several reasons. The primary challenges developers face are:

Diversity and complexity of the API ecosystem
Data mapping and consistency errors
Security and compliance issues
Integration partnership challenges
Third-party API updates
Integration maintenance problems

Complex API Ecosystem

Developers find it increasingly difficult to build integrations with a diverse set of APIs for several reasons, such as negotiating lengthy partnership contracts, testing integrations across multiple environments, the cost and complexity of scaling product integrations, and much more. Let’s examine these issues in detail.

Diverse APIs

While APIs make it easier to connect two systems, the diversity of API providers and integration procedures makes it a nightmare for developers to build multiple API integrations.

Each API provider has different systems built into the API. They may use different technologies, error-handling mechanisms, or rate-limiting protocols and can also have unique data formats—making it further challenging to facilitate seamless communication between them.

Gated APIs and integration partnership challenges

Not all APIs are open for anyone to use—gated APIs require partnership agreements to access their API keys, documentation, and sandbox environments. The companies that enter these agreements have to undergo security checks, lengthy negotiation processes, and, in some cases, pay additional fees—rendering partnership agreements extremely time and resource-intensive.

Testing across multiple environments

Building API integrations in-house means ensuring each integration runs as intended and is reliable. Testing is crucial to check the stability of each integration and whether it can handle varying data loads under different use cases.

Scalability issues

It’s important to remember that all of the challenges we’ve mentioned apply to every API integration, and most SaaS companies need to integrate with dozens of systems in their space. Scaling your company’s integration catalog is a challenge. Here’s why:

Building multiple SaaS integrations is time-consuming and resource-heavy.
Developers’ work is not finished once the integration is implemented; they then need to spend their valuable time maintaining these integrations and optimizing their performance.
Building dozens of integrations can take valuable time from the engineering team, which could be spent enhancing your core product.

Data-related challenges in API integration

The complexity of diverse APIs also poses to data mapping and consistency for integration builders.

Data mapping and normalization

Normalizing data from multiple systems of record is not an easy task. Here’s why:

Different providers store data in different formats.
Some providers may not offer the data developers need in a simple format.
Different systems may use different types of APIs.

Data consistency and accuracy

Ensuring data quality and integrity is crucial to avoid compliance and security issues as well as to minimize errors in data processing. Data quality in API integration is measured by its accuracy, timeliness, and consistency across multiple systems.

Security issues in API integrations

Security challenges in API integration include unauthorized access, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and excessive data exposure.

Data security and compliance

Every organization, regardless of its size, is wary of safeguarding and sharing its data. While it may be manageable to establish and monitor security standards for one or two integrations, it’s nearly impossible to continuously monitor security health for a dozen or more integrations without dedicated resources.

Authentication issues (401 unauthorized errors)

Another security issue in API integrations is broken authentication or broken function-level authorization. Authentication errors return an HTTP error code 401.

Challenges of keeping up with third-party APIs

Two of the most common struggles for developers building multiple third-party API integrations are inadequate or incomplete documentation and backward incompatibility.

Documentation discrepancies

Documentation discrepancies in API integration are multifold.

API versioning and backward compatibility

APIs are not static—they’re updated over time. API version changes can break the existing integrations or lead to broken endpoints and consistency issues.

Integration maintenance challenges

Maintaining dozens of integration maintenance indefinitely is a monumental task. You need to constantly monitor the health of each integration for performance issues, error resolution, and rate limits. Let’s examine these issues in detail.

Rate limiting (HTTP 429 error) and throttling

API providers sometimes impose API rate limits and throttling to control the number of API calls, prevent over-usage, and maintain integration stability. This returns an HTTP 429 error code.

API monitoring and error handling

Building integrations is only one part of the equation. Another hurdle is maintaining them for optimum performance on an ongoing basis. Integration performance depends on the time it takes to sync data, the accuracy of the data synced, frequency of errors, and the time it takes to resolve them.

Given that poor integration performance is one of the leading causes of SaaS customer churn, SaaS companies must identify errors on time and promptly resolve them.

If you are building three or more HR and payroll integrations, consider checking out Finch unified employment API. Connecting with Finch can unlock integrations with 200+ HRIS and payroll providers—covering 88% of the U.S. employer market.