Why Integrating Your Apps Is a No-Brainer

The word “timesheets” can often evoke a feeling of dread for both employee and employer. If you’re an employee at one of the thousands of businesses utilizing timecards to track their staff, the end of the day doesn’t mean you can just pick up and leave. Instead, you have to fill out a timecard recounting your day of work. Meanwhile, payroll staff spend valuable time re-entering the information the employee recorded into payroll systems for processing, eventually issuing a check. The payroll process eats up as much as 50% of a business’ total budget.

Replicon provides a comprehensive solution for teams looking to reduce human error, automate processes, and halt time theft. You can get even more out of Replicon by integrating the data from your timesheets with the other apps you use, such as QuickBooks, Concur, Namely, and Salesforce, to name a few.

Your apps need to talk to each other

Integrating timesheet data gives you the clearest picture of your operational and labor costs in real-time, which is critical for project budget monitoring and general profitability. Let’s say you use Replicon to track timesheets for clients and their associated projects, in conjunction with an app like Concur for expenses. Both apps are great at what they do – however, they inevitably use some of the same data and that means you waste valuable time and increase the risk of error manually entering the same data into two different apps. Tasks like creating a new client profile or closing a project performed in Replicon will not instantly translate to Concur.

Finance (which might use Xero or Quickbooks) for instance, needs to know when certain compensation triggers occur based on hours worked. Project Managers (Basecamp, Asana, ServiceNow, Jira) must make sure teams are working efficiently so that projects are completed profitably and Human Resources (Workday, Namely, BambooHR) also must know if employees are working the proper number of hours. This information from Replicon can be shared with all of these apps.

Integration Isn’t Like It Used To Be

We’ve covered how important integration is and the great benefits that come with it, but you might still be thinking, “Isn’t integration time consuming and expensive?” and the answer is simply that it used be.

Until recently, the integration landscape was bleak. A company either had to hire armies of consultants to implement monolithic, pre-integrated apps that were average in capabilities, or unhappily live with integration issues. Should the company decide to go with a pre-integrated solution, it could take months to roll out and hundreds of dollars – truly only the largest companies could afford this process. Cloud-based computing changed the game and leveled the playing field. With the rise of the cloud, “best of breed” business apps began to develop. Instead of thinking about integrating everything, they focused on being the best at what they did and were inspired by the consumer.

Cloud-based apps are easy to use, affordable, and you can sign up and begin using it in the same day. They democratized the business space. Most businesses out there have implemented at least one cloud-based app, and studies show that once one has been implemented, more usually follow. Though these app are affordable and brilliant at what they do, there is one big problem that stands between cloud apps and perfection – they are all built separately and therefore do not know how to work together.

This is where integration comes in – cloud apps only do a small part of what your business needs to run. In order to fill this gap, you need to make them work together seamlessly as if they were one big app. Replicon users can drive incredible value from Replicon when correctly syncing with the other cloud apps they use, but unless you are an IT person (and most users of these apps are not) you need a no-code solution that is affordable and time efficient.

The Replicon + Workato ecosystem

Finally integration is being consumerized and easy-to-use, yet powerful integration software is becoming available, no IT armies needed. Companies like Workato, a Replicon partner, can integrate Replicon with your existing accounting apps such as QuickBooks, FreshBooks and Xero, expense management apps like Concur and Expensify, HR apps like Namely and BambooHR, payroll apps like ADP and Gusto, project management apps like Basecamp and service management apps like ServiceNow and Jira – no coding required. Your company can operate as one big ecosystem, with each department communicating and collaborating to create a totally seamless experience for employees, the HR department, and clients. Replicon has an extra value that is unlocked once it is integrated with other business apps. While on its own, Replicon masterfully automates timesheet completion, it is most efficient when communication is enabled and data is shared between all apps.

At the core of your timesheet management is the simple principle that employees report their work and then get paid. This can happen more quickly and easily with integration. Apps have become consumer facing, and now integration can be easy and affordable as well. That means you no longer have to choose between subpar pre-integrated apps and the most capable standalone app for the task. When it comes to boosting productivity and increasing ROI, connecting your pre existing apps with the quick and easy to use tools that are now available is a no brainer.

For more information on Replicon’s app integrations click here, or contact a Replicon account representative. And for more on how Workato makes app integrations even easier, visit the Workato blog.