The challenge: Integration development at scale
As the global leader in practice management software for accountants, Karbon faced a critical challenge. Customers, accounting firms across 45 countries, needed to connect Karbon with dozens of industry-specific applications and general business tools to run their practices effectively.
"We had spent many years building out the capabilities that we would be able to leverage for certain in-house, particular integrations, but the real problem was trying to do it at scale," explains Ian Vacin, Co-founder and Chief Partnerships Officer at Karbon.
With a development team that dedicated 20% of engineering resources to building and maintaining integrations, Karbon recognized this approach wasn't sustainable. Each new integration required a four to six-person engineering squad and took a quarter to complete. Even simple integrations required four to six weeks of dedicated engineering effort.
The company had built a robust API, but Vacin and his co-founder realized a fundamental truth: "It wasn't going to be scalable for us to be able to hire the number of engineers it was going to be if we wanted to keep developing it in this sort of one-off fashion."
The search for a better way
Karbon needed more than just another integration tool. It needed infrastructure that could serve as the backbone for its entire integration ecosystem. The solution had to satisfy multiple requirements:
- Developer-friendly backend tools for administration, monitoring, and troubleshooting
- An intuitive frontend experience that customers could navigate without support
- Flexibility to leverage existing adapters while building industry-specific custom integrations
- Scalability to support a global customer base across six operating regions
Karbon initially chose a different platform after a comprehensive evaluation process examining 12 different metrics across multiple solutions. But after a year of implementation, it realized the vendor wasn't delivering on its promises.
"We had a lot of good conversation at the start, but we didn't have a lot of follow-up and great customer experience on the back part of that process," Vacin recalls. "We didn't necessarily get the handholding that we needed, nor did we get the customer experience that we would expect."
Why Prismatic won
During its re-evaluation, Karbon was impressed by Prismatic's rapid development pace. In just one year, Prismatic transformed from having the best backend developer tools to delivering a best-in-class customer-facing experience.
"Prismatic was able to not only satisfy and tick off all the things that we needed on managing it and on the back office side of things, but on the front-facing was able to be something that we could tie in and have a seamless view," says Vacin. "Something that our customers would feel that it was native, understood, easy to use, and easy to set up."
Karbon found a platform team willing to solve complex technical challenges alongside them. "Even to this day, we have close conversations with the team on things we're trying to solve," Vacin notes. "It's always about creative problem solving. That's been the experience throughout."
The implementation: Democratizing integration development
Prismatic fundamentally changed who could build integrations at Karbon. The platform enabled a diverse team to create production-ready integrations, from a former CTO to product managers who had never written code before.
"It's fascinating that it used to require not only a dedicated technical PM but several engineers to get each of these integrations out," Vacin explains. "Now, a couple weeks will pass by, and I'll learn about a new application that's been built by one of these folks and that it is fully capable and ready to go to market."
This democratization of integration development had several key benefits:
- Lower-cost third-party engineers could build integrations at scale
- Non-technical product managers could directly address customer needs
- Regional teams could build geography-specific integrations for local requirements
- Engineering resources remained focused on core product development
The results: Unprecedented scale and speed
3X integration output
Karbon grew from 30 to 75 integrations in just nine months, with plans to reach 100 by year's end, tripling its integration portfolio while maintaining the same team size.
4X faster development
- Previously: 4-6 weeks for simple integrations, 3-4 months for complex ones
- With Prismatic: 1-2 weeks for simple integrations, 4 weeks for complex ones
80% engineering resources freed up
Despite tripling its engineering team, Karbon kept its integration team the same size, achieving more with less through Prismatic's efficiency gains.
Global expansion support
Prismatic enabled Karbon to satisfy both global and regional needs:
- Horizontal business applications deployed across multiple geographies
- Region-specific integrations for local requirements (UK, US, Australia)
- Government system integrations for different countries
An unexpected challenge: Breaking product marketing
"I think our aha moment was the realization that we broke our product marketing team," Vacin admits with a laugh. "We built so many integrations that we didn't have the go-to-market motions to be able to support the sort of volume and capability."
The pace of integration development exceeded its ability to market them, which is a good problem, but it required Karbon to revamp its go-to-market processes completely.
The strategic impact
For Karbon, integrations aren't just features; they're a strategic differentiator. "One of our key strategic plays as a company is being able to have the best connected ecosystem for our customers who are accountants," Vacin explains.
While Microsoft integrations drive high volume, specialized accounting applications serve larger, more strategic customers. Regardless of usage volume, each integration contributes to Karbon's position as the best-of-breed platform for modern accounting firms.
"Being able to satisfy the aggregate needs of the industry as a whole and the specific needs of our particular customers that are larger and have bigger technology backbones...gives us the advantages that we need in order to rise above the rest of our competition."
Looking forward
Prismatic has become critical infrastructure for Karbon's growth strategy. The platform doesn't just enable integration development; it powers one of the company's key strategic pillars.
"Prismatic provides a capability that we need in order to handle not only that connected ecosystem at scale, but then to manage that ecosystem over time," Vacin concludes. "It is a critical piece of our infrastructure to be able to handle one of the strategic pillars that we have as a company."
For other B2B software companies facing similar integration challenges, Vacin's recommendation is clear: "I've recommended Prismatic to many of my colleagues and peers... They've been great to work with, their customer experience and the attention they give is world- class."
Key takeaways
- Democratized development: Non-technical team members can now build production-ready integrations.
- Massive scale: Tripled integration output while maintaining the same team size.
- Speed to market: Reduced integration development time from months to weeks.
- Strategic advantage: Built a connected ecosystem that differentiates Karbon from competitors.
- True partnership: Collaborates regularly with Prismatic for creative problem-solving.
