Coronavirus pandemic significantly amplified the organizations' requirements in order to embrace the digital-first strategy. Digital transformations seemed to be deprioritized in organizational goals favor that will be shifted to front & center overnight. As per the McKinsey Global survey 2020, companies mainly accelerated the digitalization rate of internal operations & also expand out the portfolios of digital products.

The integrations of digital transformation mainly facilitated by the APIs (Application programming interfaces) can be considered as intermediaries or messengers that will help in transmitting the data b/w software systems. Now a day, APIs are predictable as the "Connective tissue" of digital ecosystems which also offers business opportunities & limitless integration.

Connecting the Dots

As per the gained steam approach of BoB, integrations seem to be a key part of product strategies. There is one tool that can be used to solve the business area problems had able to integrate with other BoB products that were used alongside it. Consider HubSpot, CRM & sales software implementation by the organizations in order to track or optimize their customer relationships & sales pipelines. HubSpot readily integrates with the software of BoB such as Twilio, Zendesk, DocuSign without the need for additional development from teams of customer engineering.

The complementary tools requirement to plug into one another was mainly accompanied by a wide industry shift toward embracing openness instead of limiting interactions b/w different systems.

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Doing more with less

The organization's APIs value should be well documented, & the API economy had been thriving out for some sort of time. In order to understand the integrations landscape, it seems to be helpful to origins explore BoB's (Best of Breed) philosophy. Before the 1990s, the software vendors marketed ERP (Enterprise resource planning) suite solutions that attempted to solve out organizational challenges variety. These suites can be viewed out as impractical & cumbersome because they failed to address out the specific use-cases of the organization. As a result, vendors began building more tools that helper in solve out the functional area challenges, instead of higher suites that everything attempted for everyone.

Making it modular

For product leaders, the Development strategy for successful API needs a mindset shift to platform thinking from the product thinking. It means that modular building products, open-ended fashion that permits the recombines functionality & prioritizes flexibility for consuming the developers. IKEA shelving systems thinking, which customers can customize, assembles & purchase in various ways to meet out the requirements. Managers of API products see APIs for what their tools are: tools for business scaling and developing valuable partnerships. Potential recognizing means implementation of best practices in order to ensure adoption.

Platform proposition

The exact value of integrations goes beyond the coordinate ability of disparate tools & systems. At their best, APIs seem to be a collective mechanism for products turning into platforms. By definition, products are tools that have some sort of specific application. They seem to be limited in their ability to create several value propositions & by extension, various revenue streams. Platforms add values in a different path just by providing the layer of infrastructure through which several products can easily get built.

APIs provide the path for the latest business channels by capitalizing on the expertise of 3^rd parties who leverage them. Consuming developers can design an app for real-estate that uses Google Maps’ places APIs in order to help the user house hunt.       

Best practices

There are some required practices for build-up effective APIs that will ensure about consistent & friction-free, integration experience for consuming developers. Project managers should go through the APIs designing that should be in a scalable or reliable manner, defining the appropriate practices for frameworks that can be referred by teams.  

Delighting the developers

Developer experience seems to be a foundational pillar for the solid strategy of APIs. For integrations of API, the customer product managers need to be delighting the developers. They are the users who will ultimately call or integrate with API, potential partners will help to realize the product-to-platform vision. Labeling the DX experiencing rather than UX acknowledges that will not typical for the end-users.

A detailed structure of success & failure response

Developers want familiar or scalable data objects & status code in order to generate the best outcomes for success & failure. It means for success scenarios, the status code will be 2xx, for client-side failures, it will be 4xx, & for server-side errors, it will be 5xx. A call to API of "send email" that will simply return the response of 4xx with extra information which makes a poor DX (developer experience).

{

   "status": 400,

   "message": "incorrect request"

}

{

    “status”: 400,

    “message”: “To recipient not specified”

     “code”: 20221

}

Consistent naming endpoints & conventions

Establishment of the consistent or constant naming conventions for endpoints for API that will help in clear out the API purpose & its nature. It will also help in removing the ambiguity & contributes towards predictable & positive DX. This seems to be the best option for a common base URL for frameworks & overall API.

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In summing up

Integrations represent a wide domain along with several components, but understanding the Good API core principles is essential to develop a solid and useful strategy. APIs are not limited to the system connectors. They are also building blocks of digital networks & also a key for opening up new untapped values & also revenue streams. A successful strategy of APIs is not limited to building products; it's about building up potential. A product manager of API must adopt the appropriate platform mindset & prioritize the potential partners who lookup for the API and its integrations. We are at Mtoag to help you integrate the best mobile software development and will provide you every sort of information related to the APIs. We are available 24*7 to help and support you.