Introduction To API

Business executives are under increasing pressure to improve efficiency, increase profitability, and transform their value proposition in order to thrive in today’s hyper connected world. Having a viable digital strategy can make the difference between transforming your business and watching your competition capitalize on previously inconceivable opportunities. Application Programming Interfaces, or API’s, play a foundational role in realizing that strategy.

Today, every business is a digital business. Companies that successfully navigate this digital world will make both a technology and a mindset shift. The technology is less important than understanding that APIs are the fuel powering the apps and processes that represent digital business platforms.

The mindset change leads to wins in today’s digital world, rewarding those who make it with accelerated time to market, improved agility and the ability to leverage new channels and extend their brand as never before.

An API connects your business processes, services, content and data to channel partners, internal teams and independent developers in an easy and secure way. API’s are quickly becoming the de facto standard by which companies exchange data and build consistent inter channel customer experiences.

For example, Best Buy makes a Deal of the Day pricing special available through its website. This same data is in its mobile application, or mobile app. So the app doesn’t need to worry about internal pricing systems as it can simply call the Deal of the Day API and ask for the current pricing special. Then, the Best Buy API responds with the requested information in a standard format that the app displays to the end user.

Businesses are organized into units and departments. These entities often have different leadership and budgets, so it’s easy to see how a brand can become fractured. This fracturing leads to inconsistent employee, partner and customer experiences.

The important thing to understand about APIs is that they help you leapfrog your competition, accelerating and competing in the digital economy even if you aren’t a digital native.