Open your APIs or Stay Alone in the Dark
Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical. — Howard Schultz
Disclaimer: this article is not based on scientific research, and it might not apply to all online businesses, I don’t see how. Anyway, that is my opinion.
Subjectively speaking, everything started to evolve when the “Homo Sapiens” developed what is so-called communication, regardless of the language, but collectively, we survived and are now living with particularly advanced standards and infrastructures. Just for the record, the Latin noun homō (genitive hominis) means “human being,” while the participle sapiēns means “discerning, wise, sensible.”
Discerning, wise and sensible, that’s what made us survive the continuous development and extreme living conditions for thousands of years to land at the top of existing species pyramid.
The same metaphor applies to the online era. Twenty years ago the adoption of online services was different from today, some companies have developed, some have vanished, some have been replaced by newcomers and almost everything has changed. Back then I could not believe that my mother would talk to me using an instant messages application, or my father sells his car online. Would that change stop? You know the answer.
Businesses’ everyday job is all about the reach, network effect, expansion, new development and becoming better at what they do to make (of course) more money and also not to forget, provide value. Same apply to their online extension if not existence.
I believe that the next online business era of development will tap into new levels of communication, connectivity and interconnectivity, not only with PR and marketing but also opening their platforms to fresh minds and further growth, and this new survival and revolutionized communication is APIs.
What is an API in the first place?
Some of us know that API stands for Application Program Interface, there are tons of resources out there to define them. Not part of this blog’s domain.
However, APIs, in my understanding: are your resources. Resources are the functions of your business or the tasks that your business performs. In most cases, your business is defined by the features it provides.
So according to that definition, your APIs is what you do but in a programmable way not for you only but for others. Your API is your interface to a new audience, in this case, which might be applications and/or other businesses, and should be treated like a product on its own, with whatever product management definitions and practices it claims.
How is APIs important to online businesses?
The answer is simple; it opens your business up to endless possibilities and opportunities. Whether you like it or not, it is impossible to foresee how the future will work out, but you can help in working it out, or not :)
It also depends on the domain of the business, let’s take some examples, to make it easier to understand and add a pinch of brainstorming.
However, noteworthy points, the efforts you put into building a proper API would save you: Efforts and Money to scale whether internally or externally. Some of the ideas here are applied but not in the Middle East or at least I haven’t seen a stable publicly open APIs except for one regional e-commerce company.
Marketplaces( previously known as Classifieds)
- Some small and midsize businesses are already using sales management systems and/or CRM and the majority of these systems come with the ability to integrate with whatever is out there. A robust and smart marketplace would offer the ability to integrate using APIs. Integrations could open the gates to new and exciting opportunities, the least of which are insights about the market dynamics.
- Opening your APIs as a marketplace can potentially increase your GMV, your take rate, and your buyers percentage as well (The marketplace dilemma; who should I bring in first, buyers or sellers, chicken or egg), there are businesses with hundreds of products if not thousands. Spending hours entering their inventory is practically not doable and could be a major barrier to service adoption.
- Allowing businesses to automate, better track and provide 10x better customer service.
- New revenue streams, instead of a whole team doing one on one integrations, it is open to everyone, and you can place a pricing scheme.
Delivery services
- Allowing a room to integrate with their platform would open up possibilities like expanding the reach and consolidating small delivery businesses under one big umbrella.
- AI and automated workflows would also result in maximizing profitability and decreasing cost.
Payment tech (Fintech)
- Opening up the opportunity for businesses to create reward and loyalty programs on a micro level.
- Help credit companies better analyze consumer behavior and potentially create better tailor-made consumer products.
- Help consumers track their expenses, allowing automated business expenses reimbursement process, saves time and efforts.
What is a good API design?
Simply: RESTful, Webhooks, Queues, Orchestration, Circuit breaker, Versioning, CI and CD. Also the balance between the need for change (and dragging along legacy) and the need to ensure that integrations don’t break with each release. More to come in this area in future blogs.
Why should product managers know about their product’s APIs?
Solid APIs documentation would help the product people in getting to know more about their business and learn more on a cross-functional level, and maybe an aha moment will come and open up strong revenue models or service value.
Closure
Considering an open extension of your business will make you more organized, resilient to market fluctuations, accessible and modern. It will help you grow by connecting and interconnecting. Designing strong APIs requires a seasoned team and highly skilled engineers and architects, so pay attention to who is creating them and why you are creating them in the first place.
No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team. — Reid Hoffman
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