Integration and Automation

To extend the functionality and versatility of your ServiceM8 platform, you may start considering integrations and automations.

  • Integration: connecting two or more systems together
  • Automation: getting one or more systems to automatically run tasks without intervention

You can do one or the other, or both together. It depends on what you are trying to achieve.

ServiceM8 already has some integrations and automations built right into it. Sending a job to be invoiced to an accounting platform, like Xero,  is an integration. Sending a booking reminder SMS to a customer is an automation.

But what happens if the integration or automation you want is not available?

WorkM8 Automation SaaS

We help businesses with integrations and automations that aren’t readily available in ServiceM8.

We call this our WorkM8 Automation SaaS (Software-as-a-Service).

Using Zapier, we have developed our own advanced Zapier integration specifically for ServiceM8, and with it we build customised integrations and automations for many businesses, such as

  1. Convert a ServiceM8 job into a ClickUp project, and keep the project and ServiceM8 job linked together for updates.
  2. Automatically ingest a weekly or monthly CSV file into Airtable then create new ServiceM8 jobs.
  3. Whenever somebody makes (or changes) an appointment in Calendy, create and assign a new ServiceM8 job and booking time, or update the booking time for the existing job.
  4. Notify a supervisor by SMS whenever a ServiceM8 job as been changed to ‘Unsuccessful’.
  5. From a ServiceM8 Quote job, send a request to a customer  to complete and sign a new service agreement using JotForm. Once the JotForm has been signed, convert the ServiceM8 job to a Work Order, put it into the ‘Accepted’ queue, notify the manager, update the job with comments and apply a badge to both the job and client card.  

These are just a few real-world examples of how businesses rely on WorkM8 Automation SaaS to integrate and automate their ServiceM8 systems.

FAQ

Software-as-a-Service, SaaS, is a way for a business like ours to provide a managed service using software. For the WorkM8 Automation SaaS –

  • the software is Zapier, and
  • the managed service is integration and automation.

This means you don't have to worry about buying subscriptions or licences to different automation platforms. Instead, we provide the backend integration platform, in this case, Zapier.

We also design, create, and then support the customised integrations and automations.

All of this is bundled into a recurring service charge, usually in advance and in yearly cycles.

Well, that truly depends on things like:

  • Is there an existing integration with Zapier?
  • If no, does the software have an open REST API? 
  • What are you expecting to do by connecting your software to ServiceM8?
  • Do the API's support the 'thing' you are trying to do?

These and many more questions would need to answered before reaching a 'Yes' or 'No' answer

It depends on the automation or the integration. We use Zapier as our back-end integration and automation platform, simply because it is the most widely used. The trade-off is Zapier is priced a little higher when compared to similar platforms like Make or Pabbly Connect.

All integrations require an initial design, setup, and testing phase, called the proof-of-concept (or POC). That alone will start at $1500 to $2000.

Once built and operational, there will be the ongoing SaaS charge which will start from $3K /year ($250 /month).

A better question than "is it expensive?" would be "is it viable?". 

Viability is deciding whether the cost to do something is justified by:

  • Desirability: how badly is it needed?
  • Feasibility: can it be done?

Let's say that the cost of doing something in your business today is causing you to bleed an extra $2K /month in labour and overtime payments, so $12K cost /year.

An integration or automation costing $2K to setup and then a running cost of $3K per year will have a return on investment in under 3 months. In the first year your costs are reduced by $7K, and then $9K the following year.

Viability works the other way too. Maybe you are missing out on $5K a month in potential revenue that a $300 /month ($3.6K /year) SaaS solution might cost you.

Would you invest a monthly operating expense of $300 for a $4.7K monthly revenue boost return? Most business will likely say yes. 

ServiceM8 already has its own native integration with Zapier, and if you have an existing Zapier account then you will find it listed as 'ServiceM8'.

The WorkM8 Automation SaaS uses a private and customised integration that we specifically built to help connect ServiceM8 to other systems using Zapier. In-house, our integration is code named 'Sweet' haha because that was the reaction we got from the first client on it.

There is a huge difference in the functionality between what our advanced WorkM8 Automation SaaS integration (Sweet) can do, and what the native ServiceM8 integration can do.

Some simple examples include sending SMS's using your ServiceM8 SMS monthly quota, or create a job time entry into an existing job card,  or creating special webhook subscriptions to act as triggers for specific events and conditions that occur in your ServiceM8 system. The native ServiceM8 Zapier integration cannot do these things.

To visualise, let's say the native ServiceM8 Zapier integration will give you access to 5% of the possibilities to automate things within ServiceM8, whereas our advanced integration gives us access to more like 90%. 

Also, we don't purely rely on our own advanced integration when building automations. Sometimes we have to create custom code using JavaScript or Python to interact with the ServiceM8 API endpoints  as necessary. We also continue to use ServiceM8's more basic native Zapier integration for some steps, to avoid reinventing the wheel. 

You can create your own integrations using the existing ServiceM8 native Zapier integration. But what you won't be able to create the advanced and complex workflows in the same way we can using our WorkM8 Automation SaaS.