Steve Cangiano, Chief Product Officer — CMiC, recently participated in a thought leadership interview exploring why strong integration partners are essential for construction software providers.
In this comprehensive Q&A session, Cangiano discusses CMiC's integration strategy, provides an overview of CMiC's open API interface, and explains the business benefits of third-party integrations.
Q: How would you describe CMiC's integration partner strategy?
A: CMiC is a construction ERP platform, and when you're building, marketing, and selling any kind of platform, your integration strategy is almost as important as the core product itself. To truly call yourself a platform, you need to be flexible and encourage a healthy partner ecosystem to complement your offering.
Our construction ERP covers payroll, accounting, asset management, job costing, project controls, document management, and many other functions. The chances of a single customer wanting to use all of these features exactly as we've built them is pretty low.
Most customers want to use 75-80% of these workflows within our platform, but it's crucial that when a specific department or group wants to use a different product, we have an ecosystem that allows that partner to write to our API and integrate their data into our platform. Many customers continue using CMiC as the main data repository while choosing to enter data from another interface or product.
If you're going to be an ERP platform, you absolutely need a strong partner ecosystem that makes it convenient for partners to onboard and for customers to build custom integrations as needed. Our strategy focuses on offering a comprehensive construction ERP with all the major modules you'd expect. We'd love for everyone to use the entire system because they'll get the most value, but we recognize that won't always be the case.
For example, your HR team might want to use a specialized applicant-to-hire product they think is excellent, but they ultimately want to get that employee data into CMiC. It's not about taking away from our platform—it's about ensuring that employee data ends up in CMiC, which is what matters most. We want to build a partner ecosystem so that external product can easily write to our platform using our APIs.
This allows customers to use the vast majority of CMiC while having the flexibility to use specialized products for specific workflows, knowing that data will ultimately flow into CMiC. What I often say in presentations is that CMiC is primarily in the data business. Nobody uses our accounts payable screen because it's the most beautiful interface they've ever seen—they use it because putting that data in the system connects high-quality information across the entire ecosystem, allowing them to get maximum value from the platform.
When it comes to integrations, we want as many integration providers as possible because it means they're putting more data into the platform, which ultimately makes the system more valuable since we are in the data business as an ERP.
Another common use case involves owners mandating specific systems. In construction, an owner might say, "If you want my project, you're going to use my system." Even if that customer loves using CMiC and thinks it's a great platform, they need a path to comply with that owner's requirements for a $4 or $5 billion hospital project.
They need to ensure that data gets into CMiC because when that project finishes, the data is the most valuable part of that completed project. We specialize in integrations with even competitive products because of these scenarios. This is the sign of a true platform—creating a healthy ecosystem where everyone can build integrations, whether they're competitors or not, because customers ultimately need to use both products.
We want to ensure they stay in our platform rather than being motivated to switch entirely. We want to avoid situations where they think, "I don't want to enter data twice, so maybe I'll just use this other product the owner requires." That's what we're trying to prevent by making it convenient for them to use both systems.
Q: Can you elaborate on CMiC's open API interface?
A: This is an important topic because it's easy to say "We have an open API," but that doesn't tell the whole story. Just because you have an API doesn't mean you've connected to other partners and built integrations—that's a crucial distinction. Many companies say, "We have an open API. Everything's great." The important detail is that we have an open API, and we have either facilitated or built these integrations with partners ourselves.
Q: What are the differences between integration partner-built and CMiC-built integrations?
A: At CMiC, we have two categories: CMiC-built integrations and partner-built integrations.
CMiC-built integrations are ones where the partner we're working with may not have any business reason to build the integration, but we do. This usually happens with competitors. They might compete with CMiC, but we have enough customers who need to use that product for various reasons, so we strategically invest in writing that integration.
Partner-built integrations involve smaller companies that want access to CMiC's customer base. CMiC has a very healthy market share in North America and is expanding globally. These partners want to access that customer base, so they're willing to invest in writing to our API and joining our partner ecosystem.
Whether it's CMiC-built or partner-built determines who does the heavy lifting, but it doesn't just start with an API. It requires a customer, partner, or ourselves to invest the engineering time in writing that integration to make use of those APIs.
Our API strategy recognizes that we have a very large product with probably one of the widest feature sets in the industry. We have everything from payroll applications to document management products—features that are typically offered by two or three different companies.
It's challenging, but we believe our API layer needs to be comprehensive and cover the entire width of the product. It's an ongoing exercise because every time we work with a new partner or customer, they'll tell us what they can do and what they'd like to optimize. In the interest of onboarding that partner or building strategic integrations, we're constantly investing in those APIs.
This has been a huge focus for us—investing in that foundation. It's relatively easy to say, "Let's get a bunch of partners and load up our website with logos," but that all depends on a solid API foundation. That's what we've spent the last couple of years focusing on, including high-quality documentation, stable and fast APIs, and a support layer so partners and customers can get real answers to their questions.
We've worked to change our culture so everyone understands how APIs are used, what the best practices are, and we have subject matter expertise—just like when someone answers a payroll or financial support question, but they're answering API questions from our partners and customers.
Q: What types of business benefits do these integrations provide to CMiC's customers?
A: It depends on who you're asking, but generally, it comes down to two things: high-quality data and connectivity. That's ultimately why I build any integration and why I select an ERP platform. I want high-quality connected data across my entire organization.
If a department—maybe the sales team—wants to use another CRM, that's fine. But if we believe the value of having a platform is that data will be high-quality and connected across the whole organization, I need to ensure that data gets back into the system.
The first business benefit of a high-quality integration is that data comes back clean into the platform so that when I generate reports, I'm not thinking, "This came from over here" or "This is missing because we didn't get these fields from the integration." When we're thoughtful about the data and the reporting and analytics we want to do afterward, we know what we want from the integration, and we won't have those downstream issues.
If we're not capturing data at the source, we can't go back later and capture it. This is especially important in the world of AI and machine learning, where data is becoming a massive currency that customers are trying to work with.
Q: Who are your top 3 integration partners?
A: It depends on perspective. The top three integration partners change often and depend on the customer's perspective. We have many integration partners that are complementary to CMiC—things we don't really do. We have an integration with DocuSign, for example. We're not in the signing workflow business, so using that for subcontracts or change orders is a really nice complementary solution.
We have others, like Oracle Textura , where we have some request-for-payment features within CMiC, but they're also complemented very well by all the things Textura does. It really depends on which customer you're speaking to. We have many success stories with self-performing customers using tools like Field Point, which is an integration to a service management product complementary to CMiC.
We have some overlapping features—they have a work order, we have a work order—but we're not going to do a dispatch solution or handle the logistical tracking of technicians at different project sites. So it fits really well for different customers depending on what they're looking for.
The top three integrations can't be answered generically for all customers because the most obscure integration to the masses could be the most important to one of our customers. We put a lot of effort into having a comprehensive API layer so all data is available. We invest in strategic CMiC-built integrations when we feel we're the only ones who will invest in building it, but it will benefit many customers. Partner-built integrations are more open-season, where most partners can approach us and build whatever they think is best.
To wrap up that question, the three most important integrations are likely going to be the three most popular products within that company. Every customer has products that have really taken off in their organization.
If you're approaching a new customer and can say, "Here's a construction ERP that solves all these business problems, and by the way, those three popular applications that all your users love—we can connect those systems you really love into this system," it's very strategic to have all these integrations lined up. When we're implementing a new system, it helps end users get excited to see a product they love that will complement something else their company wants to implement.
Q: What is CMiC's future roadmap for their integration strategy?
A: Our future roadmap combines several key elements. We're continuing to invest in that API layer foundation. We're constantly building new features in our organization, and we're working with all our engineers, product managers, and really the whole company to transition to an API-first mentality.
When we're building new features, we're thinking about the API from the very beginning instead of having to catch up later after we've built the new screen or system and backfilled with APIs. For everything we're working on now, we're thinking about the API from the start—how it could be used, how it could be misused, and how we can ensure people have a good experience when they use it.
This culture and focus of being an API-first company is a big push for us. But we also know there are parts of our system that may not have as deep of an API, and we need to continue investing. We're constantly adding new endpoints to our library and revising existing endpoints, offering new parameters to filter or retrieve data differently.
It's an ongoing effort that will never stop. But beyond just improving the API, we're also focusing heavily on the partner onboarding experience. When you sign up to be a partner with CMiC, how do you get your sandbox account? Is there data there that you can start testing with? When I have a question, who do I ask? If I want to learn best practices from other partners, is there a community I can connect with to get those questions answered?
That's something we felt we've fallen short on in the past. Now that we have a stronger API foundation to lean on, we want to focus more on that partner journey—how do we get a partner from that first agreement they signed with us to testing with real data in a sandbox, to getting feedback from our customer base, and ultimately publishing and being listed on our website as a confirmed, registered app.
To learn more about CMiC’s integration partner ecosystem, please click here.