Executive Summary

B2B integration enables IT service providers to automate communication and data flow between their tools and their customers' systems. They eliminate the need for manual ticket handling, and can reduce onboarding time from months to days, and saving an average of 1,300 work days annually per MSP. Unlike traditional integration approaches that require custom coding or forcing customers onto your platforms, modern B2B integration ecosystems allow each party to continue using their preferred tools while information flows seamlessly between them. Whether you're an MSP struggling with customer onboarding complexity or an IT service provider managing multi-vendor environments, this guide shows you how to overcome technical constraints, address customer objections, and build profitable integration practices.

In this guide: you'll learn proven frameworks for cross-company service integration and practical approaches to building scalable B2B integration ecosystems.

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What is B2B integration?

Business-to-business (B2B) integration is the automated connection, communication, and process synchronization between organizations. It enables parties to work and collaborate effectively with partners, suppliers, and customers—regardless of the tools and applications each organization uses.

In short, it helps parties work and collaborate more effectively with their partners, suppliers, and customers — regardless of the tools and applications each party is using.  

To get customers on board, it’s far better to approach integration from the perspective of people and process, than it is technology.

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By first asking questions about how people work, how they pass information and tasks from one team or function to another, then offering simple multi-vendor integration solutions to those examples, you can then scale up your explanation of what great service integration could do for them.

Many people confuse application integration and service integration, so by removing technology from the initial discussions, you create a far better opportunity of winning their enthusiasm for integration.

Common misconceptions about B2B Integration

When customers hear "B2B integration," they often react negatively due to misconceptions shaped by past experiences:

Misconception 1: "You're just trying to sell us EDI, or a manual API coding project"

Customers imagine developers spending months writing custom code to connect systems, followed by endless maintenance headaches when APIs change, or EDI configurations fall apart.

Reality: Modern B2B integration platforms use pre-built connectors and configuration-based approaches. What once took three months of custom development now takes days of configuration.

Misconception 2: "We tried API integrations before. They always break"

Many organizations have painful memories of fragile point-to-point integrations that failed during upgrades or required constant developer attention.

Reality: Purpose-built integration automation platforms monitor connections continuously, handle API version changes automatically, and use resilient architecture that prevents single points of failure.

Misconception 3: "Integration means we have to change our tools"

Customers fear you'll force them to adopt your service desk platform or abandon familiar workflows.

Reality: Modern B2B integration ecosystems allow each party to continue using their preferred tools. The integration layer handles translation and routing transparently.

Misconception 4: "Integration projects take too long and cost too much"

Traditional integration projects often span 6-12 months with unpredictable budgets that balloon as complexity emerges.

Reality: Integration automation platforms reduce customer onboarding from months to days, with predictable subscription pricing rather than open-ended project costs.

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Success story: AHEAD needed a solution that would seamlessly integrate not just ServiceNow and the end customer, but also their monitoring solution, LogicMonitor.

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Why B2B integrations are necessary for IT service providers

Modern IT service delivery operates in fundamentally different environments than a decade ago:

Multi-vendor complexity: Customers rarely work with single providers. Your services interweave with other MSPs, cloud vendors, software suppliers, and internal IT teams. Without integration, coordinating across this ecosystem becomes impossibly complex.

Cloud proliferation: Customers use dozens of SaaS applications, each generating support needs. Your ability to integrate with these tools directly impacts service quality and efficiency.

Customer expectations: Organizations expect real-time visibility into service delivery. Manual status updates via email no longer meet expectations. Integration enables automatic, continuous visibility.

Competitive pressure: Service providers offering integrated experiences win deals against competitors requiring customers to adapt to proprietary tools and processes.

However, you still need to convince your clients it’s worth investing in! 

How to easily get customers on board with integration projects

You know what? Modern customer integration projects aren’t even projects at all — they're small,  incremental changes that improve the efficiency and collaboration of a service provider and their customers.

By approaching this as one application, one process, one set of data at a time, you can make progress toward the overall objective of improving the way people work over time.

By introducing integration as an agile incremental change, you can relax the shared pressures of having a glorified end-state and deadline to work to, and instead frame it as more of a retained service, which improves exponentially over time.

How to overcome common objections

As mentioned above, many organisations have bad experiences with technical integrations going wrong and having long-lasting negative effects. This can be overcome by zooming in on the problems they face and asking pragmatic questions about what sort of integrations they would like to have in place, which actually solves the problem rather than exacerbate it.

From there, you may come across objections like:

• the project timelines are too long
• the outcomes are too unpredictable 
• the hangovers of ‘bug fixing’ of failed integrations are too painful

At ONEiO, our Integration Automation platform is purpose-built to sidestep these common issues.

How? Well, since ONEiO endpoint types are pre-built, all integrations are configured through an interface, rather than with customized code. Not only that, but we use many-to-many connections, meaning that once an integration is set up, any number of further B2B or internal integrations can be added at any time, without hassle.

Using case studies of working examples within platforms such as ONEiO, is an excellent way of demonstrating what is possible today and removing concerns created by old-fashioned integration methods.

Start as you mean to go on

As we say, modern service integrations are on-going and incremental — by gradually adding more platforms, more B2B processes and expanding the amount of data and information, which is shared across the ecosystem of a business.

Laying out a roadmap, which looks and feels more like a growing approach to improving the way the client’s business is far more appealing than yet another project plan for something that may or may not work.

Focus on easy wins early on that quickly enable people in the businesses to work faster and smarter, then presenting back an approach you would like to use to scale up that success is a great way to help customers feel confident and secure in their decision.

How your B2B integration ecosystem could look with ONEiO

A B2B integration ecosystem, or service management ecosystem, is exactly what it sounds like — a living, breathing network of people, tools and processes that make up the delivery and management of IT services. 

Service delivery doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Generally, IT Service Providers coordinate information between one or several of the following parties to provide a service:

• Vendors, suppliers & subcontractors
• External customers
• Internal customers and their own internal integration needs

In the traditional approach to integration, you might be working with custom built point-to-point integrations, iPaaS platforms, an Enterprise Service Bus, using portals, or buying licences for your customers' systems to get the job done. 

In the Your Ecosystem approach with ONEiO, each party can simply continue working with their preferred tools and processes — all the while, information is flowing multi-directionally between them.

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Managed Service Provider Case Study: TietoEvry simplifies its integration process with ONEiO's integration automation platform 

Benefits of a B2B integration ecosystem using a best-of-breed integration automation platform

1. Better collaboration

Integration eliminates the friction that impedes collaboration:

Real-time visibility: Everyone sees current status without asking for updates. Customers know exactly what's happening with their requests. Vendors understand priorities without status meetings. Your internal teams have complete context without switching between systems.

Reduced communication overhead: When information flows automatically, you eliminate dozens of coordination emails weekly. No more "What's the status of ticket #12345?" inquiries. No more forwarding updates to three different stakeholders.

Unified context: When all relevant information is available in each party's preferred system, decisions are better informed and faster. Technicians have complete history when working tickets. Customers see resolution documentation automatically.

Example: A managed service provider supporting a healthcare organization integrated their ServiceNow instance with the customer's Jira Service Management system. Previously, coordination required daily sync calls and constant email updates. After integration, both organizations had real-time visibility into all service requests. The result: 60% reduction in coordination time, 40% faster average resolution, and dramatically improved customer satisfaction.

2. Reduce time to value

Traditional customer onboarding for integrated service delivery spans 3-6 months. Modern integration automation reduces this to days or weeks.

Traditional onboarding timeline:

• Month 1: Discovery, requirements gathering, technical assessment
• Months 2-3: Custom integration development
• Month 4: Integration testing and debugging
• Month 5: User acceptance testing
• Month 6: Production deployment and stabilization

Modern integration automation timeline:

• Week 1: Discovery, routing rule design
• Week 2: Configuration and initial testing
• Week 3: User acceptance testing
• Week 4: Production deployment

Business impact:

• Generate revenue from new customers 4-5 months earlier
• Reduce onboarding costs by 60-70%
• Improve win rates by offering faster time-to-value than competitors
• Onboard more customers with same technical resources

Example: TietoEvry, a major European IT service provider, reduced average customer onboarding from 4-5 months to 2-3 weeks using ONEiO's integration automation platform. This acceleration allowed them to double their customer onboarding capacity without adding integration staff, directly impacting revenue growth.

3. Save on ITSM software license costs

When integration enables customers to continue using their preferred tools, you eliminate costs for additional service desk licenses.

Traditional approach costs:

• Customer has 100 users who submit requests
• You require 20 of their support team to have licenses in your service desk
• At $50/user/month: $12,000 annually for licenses
• Plus training costs, adoption challenges, and user resistance

Integration approach:

• Customer's 100 users continue working in their existing system
• Customer's 20 support staff continue using familiar tools
• Zero additional licensing costs
• No training required
• Better user adoption because nothing changes for them

At scale: MSP with 30 customers, each requiring 15-25 additional licenses:

• Traditional approach: $360,000-600,000 annually in licensing costs
• Integration approach: $0 in additional licensing costs
• Net savings fund the entire integration platform investment

Beyond direct licensing savings, you eliminate costs for:

• Training customer staff on your systems
• Supporting users in unfamiliar platforms
• Managing access and permissions across customer organizations
• Dealing with adoption resistance

4. More time for creating value

MSPs using integration automation platforms save an average of 1,300 work days annually through eliminated manual ticket handling.

Where time is saved:

Ticket creation: 5-10 minutes per ticket eliminated when tickets automatically appear in your service desk instead of manual entry from customer emails or portal submissions.

Status updates: 3-5 minutes per update eliminated when changes in your system automatically sync to customer systems.

Information gathering: 10-20 minutes per ticket eliminated when customer context automatically transfers with tickets instead of requesting information via email.

Closure and verification: 5-7 minutes per ticket eliminated when resolutions automatically update customer systems and knowledge bases.

For typical MSP handling 1,000 tickets monthly:

• Time saved per ticket: 23-42 minutes
• Monthly time savings: 383-700 hours
• Annual time savings: 4,600-8,400 hours (2.3-4.2 FTEs)

That capacity can be redirected to:

• Proactive service improvements
• Customer success initiatives
• Service portfolio expansion
• Technical debt reduction
• Strategic projects

Example: A mid-sized MSP can spend 450 hours monthly on manual ticket administration across their customer base. After implementing integration automation, this can be reduced to 90 hours monthly - a savings of 360 hours monthly or 4,320 hours (2.2 FTEs) annually. They redirected this capacity to building automation tools that became service differentiators in competitive evaluations.

Let us create your own B2B data ecosystem

ONEiO redefines efficient integrations for IT Service Providers.

Imagine delivering service integrations with no more technical complexity, no more manual integrations - but integrations which are easily repeatable, guarantee fastest time to value and require zero maintenance.

To get there, ONEiO has not only built an integration automation platform, but we make sure that all your integrations work, all of the time. 

That’s it. You don’t need to build any kind of integration yourself, and we ensure that tools and services stay connected. Simple. 

Let us show you how simple creating your ecosystem can be. Get in touch with us for a no-strings-attached assessment call. 

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About the authors:

ONEiO is a next-generation Managed Integration Service Provider, delivering Integration Ops as a Service for IT and technology service providers. Unlike traditional system integrators, we don’t just build integrations—we operate and automate them, eliminating bottlenecks, reducing costs, and accelerating time-to-value. Powered by ONEAI® and deep domain expertise, we ensure integrations scale with your business, so you can focus on delivering exceptional IT services.