If you’ve ever had to connect multiple business systems together, you know it’s never as simple as it sounds.
I’ve been in situations where just one change in a CRM breaks the whole chain of updates across finance, supply chain, and analytics tools. Add in APIs that don’t always play nice, outdated middleware, and the usual works-on-my-machine moments, and suddenly you’re firefighting instead of coding.
For a while, I did what many devs do—hacky scripts, cron jobs, and custom connectors. They worked… until they didn’t. Maintaining them was a nightmare, and every new tool the business adopted felt like a ticking time bomb.
The Aha Moment
What really changed for me was approaching integrations with a workflow-first mindset instead of a code-first mindset.
Instead of thinking “how do I connect System A to System B,” I started mapping out the actual data flows:
- What data needs to move?
- When should it move?
- What should trigger it?
- What happens if something fails?
By focusing on workflows, I could see the bigger picture—and that’s when I realized most of my pain came from reinventing the wheel.
Automation Over Glue Code
Instead of hardcoding connectors, I shifted toward automation platforms designed for data workflows.
The best ones give you:
- Pre-built connectors for popular systems (ERP, CRM, cloud apps)
- No-code setup for business users but flexibility for devs
- AI-driven workflow management that reduces human babysitting
It meant I could focus more on logic and less on duct-taping APIs together.
The Developer Angle
Here’s the funny part: at first I thought “no-code” tools weren’t for devs. But the more I used them, the more I realized they free up dev time.
No more debugging brittle scripts at 2 a.m.
No more reinventing ETL pipelines.
Instead, I could extend workflows with custom logic only where it mattered.
And because these platforms handle monitoring, retries, and logging, I wasn’t stuck playing ops engineer all the time.
Final Thoughts
If you’re a developer tired of building one-off integrations that break with every update, take a step back and rethink how you approach workflows. Sometimes the smartest code is the code you don’t have to write.
For me, exploring platforms like eZintegrations made a huge difference. It’s built around AI-driven workflows, connects with most enterprise systems out-of-the-box, and actually respects developer time. I didn’t have to give up control, but I did get back hours of sanity.
💬 Curious — do you still prefer custom scripts for integrations, or have you started experimenting with workflow automation tools?
Top comments (0)