How to Build Integrations with Platforms Bigger Than You

Описание: In this episode of Between Product and Partnerships, Biljana Pecelj joins Cristina Flaschen to explain how smaller teams successfully ship integrations with larger platform partners. She makes the case that leveraging usage data and performance metrics is the key to proving your integration's value, giving you the necessary influence to move up a major partner's priority list.

Biljana shares lessons from her experience managing integrations at Hootsuite during major platform shifts, including the rise of Instagram Business APIs and the emergence of new features like Stories that didn’t always come with immediate API support. She also details the process of aligning internal stakeholders to ensure integration features actually ship despite shifting external APIs.

The conversation also covers the operational side of integrations, this includes why observability needs to be built early, how teams detect silent failures before customers do, and how to structure internal alignment when integration work touches engineering, legal, partnerships, and revenue.

Who we sat down with

Biljana Pecelj is a Principal Product Manager at Ledgy with deep experience building integrations inside platform-heavy environments. She has worked extensively on partnership-driven product initiatives where execution speed depends on navigating both technical constraints and external partner relationships.

Biljana brings expertise in:

Building integrations in environments where APIs and features evolve asynchronously
Designing for observability and proactive monitoring
Navigating asymmetric partner relationships
Aligning roadmap priorities across product, partnerships, legal, and engineering
Managing tradeoffs between beta opportunities and engineering capacity

Episode Highlights

01:55 – How integration product management differs from core product work
04:40 – Navigating power imbalances with large platform partners
07:15 – Using data to strengthen partner conversations
10:30 – Building observability when resources are limited
13:45 – Handling silent integration failures
17:50 – Managing beta features and roadmap shifts
21:30 – Aligning cross-functional teams around integration priorities
24:45 – Why relationships accelerate integration execution
28:10 – Lessons learned from building inside platform ecosystems

Connect with the Speakers

Connect with Cristina: www.linkedin.com/in/cristina-flaschen/
Connect with Biljana: www.linkedin.com/in/biljanapecelj/
Learn more about Ledgy at ledgy.com