What Are Mobile App Integration Services? A Complete Guide for Businesses

In today’s tech-savvy world, businesses rely on a wide range of mobile applications to bring productivity, streamline operations, and drive growth. As everyone seems to adapt to mobile applications to make their daily lives easier, it is essential to ensure a seamless interaction between them. That’s where mobile app integration services come LIVE. 

It basically enables different applications, services and systems to collaborate with each other efficiently. With the help of a custom mobile app development company, businesses can get a holistic and single view of their data and processes. 

So let’s explore the world of mobile app integration, its components, its importance and various techniques to do it.

What is Mobile App Integration?

Application integration connects different systems to enable seamless communication, data exchange, and improved productivity by eliminating silos.

Organizations use apps like CRM and ERP, but different vendors and data structures prevent them from communicating by default. And application integration smoothly bridges this gap, ensuring that these systems work in harmony and collaborate without human intervention. 

How Does Mobile App Integration Work?

Application integration works by building a cohesive system that ensures information is successfully transferred between apps and business processes are automated across different systems. 

1. Search integration requirements: Before setting up mobile integration, businesses should evaluate their integration requirements, find which of the operational apps require connection, and decide on the data that needs to be shared. 
2. Select integration strategy: There are various application integration methods available, including point to point integration, process, function, and data integration. Thus, businesses must choose the strategy that fits perfectly well within their organizational needs and objectives. 
3. Establish connections: After selecting the integration strategy, the next step is to establish a connection between the apps using any one of the components including APIs, middleware, or custom written code. You can also opt for some integration portals to simplify the process and they even offer pre-built adapters for apps. 
4. Describe data mapping and transformations: Every business should clearly describe data mapping between apps, ensuring that the information is shared efficiently between systems. Data mapping should also ensure that the data is compatible with the receiving system/app format. 
5. Implement integration logic: The business organization must implement the integration logic which is responsible for monitoring data exchange, function calls, and execution between the connected apps. It does the job of creating custom codes or configuring middleware.  
6. Evaluate and maintain integrations: Once the integration is all set up, the business must monitor its performance as needed. Any issues are resolved by updating integration settings to keep the mobile app performing as expected.

Key Components of Mobile App Integration

There are various components of mobile app integration. However, the most common ones are:

1. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs): APIs are a set of tools and protocols that are critical in building software applications. They enable different applications to talk to each other while allowing businesses to integrate multiple systems together. APIs act as rulebooks for accessing app data and functions, simplifying workflow automation. Consider an application on your phone that you use to check the weather. So when you want to check the weather outside, you send a request via an API to a remote server that has the current weather data. The server responds back with the weather information, and the app displays that to you.
2. Connectors and Adaptors: These are software components that allow different applications to connect to each other. Connectors provide a framework for merging different applications together, while adapters enable applications to connect to different data sources. With connectors and adaptors, businesses don’t have to worry about finding standard methods for connecting systems. Consider an example where a mobile app uses a connector to fetch data from a cloud-based CRM system. An adapter processes this data and formats it into an appropriate form to display in the app’s UI components.
3. Integration Middleware: Integration middleware, as the name suggests, acts as a layer between different software and applications, enabling them to communicate with each other. It builds a framework-like structure to connect applications, ensuring that data is shared smoothly and processes are automated. It’s a centralized platform that can manage various components like connectors, APIs, adapters, etc.
4. Data Transformation Tools: These are software components that enable businesses to transform data from one format to another. They were introduced, noticing the fact that different applications use data in different formats. So, to bring consistency, organizations can use data transformation tools to standardize data formats and allow a seamless sharing of data, reducing manual tasks and improving efficiency. Contact our company to hire integration experts.

Benefits of Application Integration

1. Improved Decision-making: Application integration plays a crucial role in decision-making by providing a more comprehensive view of data. By integrating different applications together, businesses can get insights to make better and more informed decisions. It helps organizations collect data from multiple sources and display it on a single dashboard. Integrating ERP, CRM, and HRM data gives a unified view, helping uncover trends and make better decisions.
2. Reduced Costs and Increased Efficiency: Application integration automates workflows, reduces manual tasks, and saves businesses money. Not only this, their team can focus on more important tasks that can lead the business toward growth. Application integration also helps to reduce data duplication and inconsistencies, further resulting in improved data accuracy and reduced operational costs.
3. Streamlining Business Processes: Application integration streamlines tasks like data entry, scheduling, and reporting, boosting business productivity. Not only this, but businesses can respond almost instantaneously to the changes in the market. Example- in launching a product, or entering a new market, and adapting to the changing needs of consumers. A flexible integration system lets businesses connect apps to their infrastructure, helping them stay relevant and competitive.
4. Data Sharing and Collaboration: Another benefit of application integration is improvement in data sharing and collaboration. In today’s data-driven world, integration ensures consistency, eliminates silos, and enables easy data access, boosting transparency, communication, and collaboration across departments.

Techniques and Patterns in Mobile Application Integration 

There are many techniques and patterns used for integrating applications together, each with its unique approach. Some of the most commonly used techniques are point-to-point integration, federated integration, event-driven architecture, and hub-and-spoke integration. 

1. Hub-and-spoke integration: This technique involves connecting different apps to a central hub. It uses connectors and adapters to link selected apps to the hub, allowing data sharing and easy app management.
2. Point-to-point integration: This technique is particularly useful when you want to connect two applications together. It makes use of custom interfaces to connect two applications, allowing them to share data. 
3. Federated integration: Especially helpful for connecting a large number of applications, federated integration technique allows applications to be connected without a central hub or middleware. It uses APIs to connect them, enabling them to share data effortlessly with each other. 
4. Event-driven architecture: Ideal for businesses that require real-time data processing, event-driven architecture is an integration pattern that can send and receive events between different applications. 

Final Thoughts 

Application integration is not something which businesses should ignore in today’s interconnected world. Especially after knowing that it can streamline processes, help in decision making, enhance collaboration and reduce costs. By partnering with a hybrid mobile app design services company, you can leverage the full benefits of integration to stay competitive in today’s ever-changing business landscape. 

Brain Inventory is a leading software development company, with years of experience in delivering tech projects to our clients from across the globe. So, contact us to schedule a meeting and discuss how we can collaborate to make your dream project come to life!