Sopheon eats, sleeps, and breathes innovation. Headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, the company delivers software solutions that empower global businesses to create products that change the world. One of the company’s key offerings is Accolade, an innovation management solution that helps its customers integrate data from multiple sources to consistently identify, evaluate, and execute against the right strategic priorities.
In the past, Sopheon built custom integrations as part of the Accolade implementation process. To inspire more organizations to adopt the platform, the company aimed to streamline the onboarding process, using APIs to create standardized, reusable integrations.
“Many Accolade use cases require integration with third-party systems,” explains Colin Tattersall, Product Manager Accolade Integration Engine at Sopheon. “For example, some clients connect Accolade to customer relationship management [CRM] systems, enabling sales teams to send ideas from customer conversations in the field back into the innovation platform.
“It’s also valuable to feed data from Accolade into other applications, such as enterprise resource planning [ERP], product lifecycle management [PLM], and issue-tracking systems.”
Innovating with APIs
To help new clients unlock the value of Accolade faster, Sopheon has embraced an API-driven approach to integration powered by Amplify Integration Builder, part of the Amplify Platform.
By using APIs, Sopheon avoids the need to install additional applications on each client’s Accolade server. This speeds up the deployment process and reduces ongoing management and maintenance requirements.
Accelerating integration
Amplify Platform enables Sopheon to integrate its Accolade deployments with third-party solutions via 170 reusable software connectors. Amplify Platform offers out-of-the-box connectors for many of the most widely-used software solutions, including SAP S/4HANA, Jira, Salesforce CRM, and more.
And with the low-code interface in Amplify Integration Builder, it’s fast and simple for Sopheon’s consultants to adjust those connectors to meet unique client requirements.
Cutting time-to-value
By using Amplify Platform to support an API-powered approach to integration, Sopheon is confident that it can accelerate deployments and deliver value to clients faster.
One Fortune 500 client has streamlined the process by which it brings data from SAP ERP into Accolade to make cost decisions about products.
“In the past, the client manually re-keyed this data into Accolade, increasing the risk of human error,” says Annette Lombardo, Product Marketing Manager at Sopheon. “Today, we offer them an API that delivers SAP data to Accolade every 30 minutes — saving many hours a month and helping them evaluate their portfolios effectively.”
A future-proof integration platform
Amplify Platform gives Sopheon centralized control over their API integrations while ensuring they continuously meet high performance and security standards. The platform brings together the tools Sopheon needs to discover, use, reuse, and govern APIs across multiple gateways, vendors, and application environments—now and in the future.
“Our work with Axway is making it easier to forge relationships with new prospects because we can show them that we already have standard connectors for their core applications,” concludes Tattersall. “Accolade has been supporting clients around the world for more than two decades, and we’re confident that the Amplify platform will help us deliver even greater value in the decades to come.”
Download the full case study to see how Sopheon is letting data integration tasks fade into the background with Axway.
Follow us on social