Ari Kankainen, Senior Integration Developer at Frends made a bold career move from an employee to a consultant. Now Kankainen describes what the change has felt like and what it means working with integrations and particularly Frends integration platform.

Kankainen spent 16 years working with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in HR services. In his job, he introduced Frends integration platform.

“I was following Frends for a few years and it seemed like a nice workplace. What is more, my friend was working there, so I got to ask about his experience. Finally, I was encouraged to apply for Frends”, says Kankainen.

Kankainen started working at Frends in February 2021. Work was familiar with Frends integration platform but now in a different kind of role – as a consultant. For Kankainen it is most rewarding getting to help people.

“It feels amazing being able to release people from unnecessary manual work and, hence, make them happier.”

Kankainen enjoys how workdays differ from each other. Every service request is a chance to learn more. Kankainen believes that developing one’s skills continuously should be self-evident in consulting.

“As a consultant, you are forced to develop yourself in a more comprehensive manner. To succeed one must stay ahead. On the other hand, you don’t have to spend time on back office work, which is inevitable in the role of an employee.”

Integration work requires more than just technical knowledge

When working with integrations one must not only understand technical processes but also how the business runs system-wise and what kind of requirements different industries set for the work. Social skills are essential, too.

“Consultants really benefit from strong social skills as you must know how to ask the right questions. The client interaction is frequent especially when solving more challenging or multidimensional issues.”

Kankainen evaluates that one can easily start working with Frends integration platform with some knowledge of interfaces. Alternatively, interest or experience of programming and system work is sufficient. Especially knowledge of Object-oriented programming, XML and JSON makes one a great fit for the job.

Kankainen finds that integration platforms are increasingly prominent in any industry as manual work is expensive and error-prone.

“There is a lot of bureaucracy in payroll, for example. The employees keep on repeating tasks that could be carried out by machines. People should rather focus on process development.”

Regarding Kankainen, a typical indication that a company needs an integration platform occurs when two existing systems are being integrated.

"It should be alarming if sales representatives of both systems report that there is no option for an automatic integration but both ends require heavy custom work. With Frends data can be flexibly converted to a desired form and be combined from different databases."

Hyperautomation is used to decrease the amount of manual work significantly.

“Instead of doing unnecessary work between integrations can one benefit from an integration platform and only code something once. Thus, the time and effort of human work can be saved.”