Are Integration Partners the New Merger?

At L Marks, we’re always looking for different ways to solve the same problem.

Our job is to scout solutions from multiple angles so our clients get real choice –  not just a shortlist of look-alike companies doing roughly the same thing. And often, when you look across the landscape, you spot solutions that would be perfect together.

Sometimes they’re already integrated (great). Sometimes they’re not…and we really wish they were.

Because while some companies try to do everything, that doesn’t always mean they do everything well. As the saying goes, a jack of all trades is a master of none. But when a company that does one thing brilliantly partners with another brilliant company that does something else but complementary, that’s often where the real innovation magic happens.

Which got us thinking: integration partnerships are starting to look a lot like the new merger.

The industry context supports this shift. The explosion of specialised software, the need for seamless data flow, the rise of AI, and growing customer demand for joined-up solutions are all pushing companies toward tighter integrations:

• Inadequate technology integration is the #1 barrier to investment in tech
• Integrations are discussed in ~60% of all sales conversations (State of SaaS Integrations Report)
• 52% of organisations have expanded into new markets through integrations (Merge’s State of Product Integrations Report)

But integrations and mergers are still very different beasts.

Integration partners collaborate around specific goals while remaining independent, typically connecting via APIs to share functionality or data. Mergers, on the other hand, are the full commitment: one legal entity, shared control, deep operational and cultural integration… lawyers very much involved.

If integrations are relationships, mergers are the marriage.
And in a 21st-century tech landscape where optionality, speed, and flexibility matter more than ever,  it’s no surprise many companies are choosing the long-term relationship before walking down the aisle.

This week, we wanted to highlight integrations that just make sense across the industries we’re actively working in the kind where you see them and think: of course these belong together.

This Week’s Standouts

Hospitality: Tenzo provides a restaurant business intelligence platform that helps hospitality businesses use their operational data to improve performance, efficiency, and profitability by unifying data from different systems (like POS, labour, inventory) into one place for real-time insights, AI-powered sales forecasting, and tools for managers to make better decisions on staffing, ordering, and increasing sales. They have 70+ integrations and they focus on helping restaurants shift from surviving to thriving by tackling challenges like rising costs and labour shortages.

Logistics: Mujin Corp develops intelligent robotics using their MujinOS platform and MujinController to enable industrial robots for complex tasks like palletising, depalletising, and bin picking without extensive coding, integrating with warehouse systems (WMS) and AGVs for flexible, high-speed automation in factories and warehouses. Key integrations include WMS, AGVs, conveyor systems, and handling various packaging types, with solutions like QuickBot offering plug-and-play deployment

Healthcare: Patients Know Best (PKB) is a technology platform and social enterprise offering a patient-controlled personal health record (PHR) system. Integrating information across health and social care data from multiple providers, along with patient input, into one online record accessible via web or the NHS App. Their focus is person-generated data, including through integrated apps, devices and wearables alongside symptom tracking and questionnaire responses to build a record reflective of the lived experience.

We’d Like To Hear From You

If you are working in this space, or know a team that is, send a message to abigail@lmarks.com.