The first week of July has seen a continuation of the UK’s monsoon season, as well as the release of the first in idibu’s new Native360 Series. A series of next-gen integrations designed using only webservices; the Native360 has been launched with the plug-in to the RDB ProNet system.

Well now, you may say, freak weather I’m happy to discuss, but why should I care about webservices and next-generation integrations? It’s a good question, and the answer involves two words: efficiency and elegance.

Recruiters, like many people these days, use technology to perform what were previously manual processes – post ads, read CV’s, respond to application emails etc. Undoubtedly this is a good thing, but an increasing downside is that as more systems are used to perform these different tasks, the chances increase that somewhere along the line some of your data is going to get washed away, go unread & unused. This kind of thing will have an impact on your business and repeated over time means everyone has to run twice as fast just to keep standing still. Ghosts in the machine indeed. Also, using multiple systems means time spent between the two logging in and out, copying and pasting information across etc. This can lead to easy distractions, and we forgot to mention the training requirements for each system to help understand and incorporate the new software into your current workflow.

All in all, you can easily find yourself taking as much time to do things as you did back in the dizzay. Elegant and efficient solutions these are most certainly not. These issues, and the fact that we know that technology isn’t going away any time soon, means that a key aspect of the future of recruitment is getting recruiters to use the many software systems they have more efficiently.

A great way of doing this is via the integration of two software services.

Of course, the elephant in this particular blog’s room is that unless the integrations are absolutely first class, then our problems persist.

Indeed, the added frustration of getting lost in a maze of clunky clicks, functionality not ported over from the stand-alone version and bad design, means any potential gains are lost in the swamp of poor usability. And here's the crunch - creating excellent software integrations isn't easy and to do it well takes time – after all, you’re not only working with your own kit, but someone else’s. And, to quote one of the great collections of lyricists of our times, you need to make two become one and you need to ensure that the final flow is an elegant way of working that improves usability and means your users are working with their data to provide the best possible results to your business.