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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.
