An API integration is, simply, when two or more application programming interfaces (APIs) are connected and able to talk to each other (exchange data). API integrations help businesses and organizations keep their data up to date, automate their processes, and more. Learn more and find out the benefits of API integrations and why you need them for your business.
If you’re part of a business or organization, it’s likely that your organization utilizes systems and software, on a daily basis, that have APIs. API integrations help to connect these systems and allow them to exchange data. But what is an API integration beyond that simple definition? What makes them important and why are they crucial in the modern business era? In this blog, we’ll answer those questions and more, giving you a deeper understanding of API integrations and how they can help a business in a myriad of different ways.
Before we can explain what an API integration is and how it works, we need to define the first part of the term: API. If you’re unfamiliar with what an API is, it stands for application programming interface. You can look at API integrations as a sort of middle-man between the APIs themselves. An API acts as sort of a port to the information in a software application, server, or system. An API receives an API request, processes it, and then returns a response. Through a set of definitions and protocols, the connection between the software is defined. This is an API specification. If you really want to get into the weeds, there are more technical details to describe how APIs work, but the important thing to know is that APIs allow different software and systems to communicate.
If you’re interested in learning more about APIs, check out this informative video that gives another angle on “what is an API integration”:
Let’s dive a little bit deeper into some of the nuances of working with API systems. First, it helps to be familiar with the different types of APIs out there. Primarily, when you’re working with API solutions, you’ll be dealing with private APIs, partner APIs, and public APIs. Let’s get a quick definition of each of these:
Private APIs - Private APIs are what companies, businesses, and entities use internally. These internal APIs are the most secure and don’t allow outside access.
Partner APIs - Partner APIs are shared with other business partners. This allows their application software and services to communicate with each other freely. This helps businesses branch out, open up potential new revenue, and have more efficient processes.
Public APIs - These APIs are open to anyone and everyone. Third-party APIs can connect to these public and open APIs to create better software and applications that rely on the data and functions that are behind public API. The freedom of these application integrations allows companies to innovate and expand their capabilities. Cloud APIs also typically follow under this category, as it allows an API gateway into public cloud app infrastructure, services, and data.
An example of a public API would be a marketing company that wants to create an app that gathers and graphs Twitter trend data. This company could develop their app with the graph and report functionality and then connect it to the Twitter API to pull current and historic trend data. Their application can now access the Twitter API anytime it receives an API request and return the corresponding information, allowing it to compile a trend report for the end-user.
Before moving forward, we’ll touch on two other types of APIs. These types of APIs act as guides and structures to how some APIs are created. They are RESTful APIs (aka REST APIs) and SOAP APIs.
REST APIs - REST is an architectural style that follows 6 principles to guide an API design. RESTful APIs are meant to make API design simpler and more accessible.
SOAP - SOAP APIs were developed to help standardize message formats and requests for web APIs. They’re meant to make it easier for these apps to communicate, no matter what their app environment or what programming language they were built with.
Now that we have a better understanding of the types of APIs, we can begin talking about some of the considerations and facets of API solutions. If a business uses third-party API integrations or if they create one APIs or multiple APIs of their own, it’s important to have some sort of API management protocol in place.
With proper API management, businesses can ensure that both internal and public APIs are secure, easy to use, and more. Here are some of the facets of API management:
API Gateway Development - If you have your own API, an API gateway should be in place to determine how clients are able to interact with your API. It acts as an entry-point for client requests.
API Documentation - It’s important to have API documentation to describe your API, how to interact with it, and how to use it.
API Lifecycle Management - Part of API management is making sure an API is easy to manage throughout every stage of the API lifecycle, from development to eventual retirement.
API Consumer Organization - If you plan on making APIs public or setting up a partner API system, it’s important to outline how your API is monetized and how much API consumers need to pay to access it, if you’re planning on charging at all.
API Security - Keeping your APIs interacting in a secure environment is an essential part of API management. Also, measures such as authentication and encryption may need to be implemented across API endpoints.
As you can see, proper API management is important when your business regularly accesses or interacts with APIs. It’s especially important when you have your own partner or public APIs. In the modern API environment, these kinds of solutions are essential to keep everything secure, simple to use, and intuitive as well.
So, now that we’re more familiar with the general definition of an API, let’s talk about how it ties in with API integrations. API integrations essentially facilitate and allow communications and data integrations. With an API integration, two or more applications are able to communicate and exchange data via their APIs. This allows for accurate data and a greater ability to automate a range of workflows and processes. API integrations are important for a variety of reasons. We’ll go over those next.
API integrations are becoming more and more important in the modern era. Businesses rely on all manner of software, applications, and cloud-based services to conduct their everyday processes and tasks. Imagine a world where none of these systems were able to communicate with each other. In an extreme example, without APIs we’d still have to use cash only. APIs allow credit card scanners to communicate with your bank, confirm the account, and your bank transfers the funds. That is just one of the reasons why API integrations are so important.
With API integrations implemented, a business can keep all of its data and data sources up to date and fully synced. Not only does this automatically ensure data accuracy across all databases, but it also helps businesses to be more efficient and profitable. When employees and managers have access to all the data they need, no matter what application they’re using, they don’t have to spend time seeking that information out. This means more productivity and more profitability since there’s far less time wasted and there are fewer errors due to unavailable or obsolete data.
Also, when you have API integrations in place, you can automate workflows to a more complex and useful degree. Since all of your connected systems are able to communicate, automated workflows can be triggered based on certain triggers and communications that happen between these multiple APIs.
The easiest way to explain how an API integration works is through a simple and common example. When you’re shopping online and you go to a product page, various API integrations are working to make that process possible. One API integration is the connection between the eCommerce website and the inventory system to ensure the item is in stock. If the item is in stock, this is reflected on the online store. Then another API gets to work interfacing with the delivery service to give you an estimated delivery date for your order.
The customer can then order the item, the shipping and inventory software data is updated, and the order goes through. It’s effective, there’s no detriment to the customer experience, the shipping department is given the information they need, and the warehouse inventory levels are updated. This is all done automatically, without the need for human input.
The above example should give you a bit of an idea of how beneficial API integrations are to organizations who rely on them. Can you imagine how much work it would be to do all of that manually? The tangible and intangible effect API integrations have had on business operations cannot be understated. Here are some of the most significant benefits of utilizing API integrations:
When you have multiple data sources that are constantly being modified and updated, it would be extremely costly and inefficient to need to update these changes manually. With API integrations, data syncs are automatic and everyone in the organization will always have access to the latest, accurate data. API integrations are more than just sources of data sharing though, they allow the modern world to communicate and operate. Without API integrations, many automation workflows would be impossible.
Thanks to the automation capabilities of API integrations, employees and managers don’t have to waste time performing these actions themselves. This allows them to perform their tasks more efficiently and allows productivity of an organization to increase overall.
API integrations can be programmed to scale with your business. When you have higher than normal transaction volume, or if your business is rapidly growing, an API integration can adapt to meet the higher demands.
API integrations are able to handle large quantities of data being transferred and exchanged. With API integrations running in the background, the potential and risk of human error is drastically reduced, if not eliminated from those processes entirely.
Since API integrations allow for much higher degrees of automation, they can provide all of the above benefits and more. With all of that being said, you have to implement your API integrations correctly in order for them to be effective.
Now that you have a better idea of the benefits, you likely want to implement API integrations across multiple departments and aspects of your business. But, you might also be wondering what the cost would be.
In short, there’s not necessarily a set cost for API integrations. It entirely depends on the method of integration you choose. Typically, one of the most expensive routes to go is the DIY route, building API integrations from scratch. When you’re building your integrations from scratch, your team will put in tons of work, and it could cost you an exorbitant amount of money in the long run. Generally, it’s better to use an automation platform or a service provider. Keep in mind, some of these providers will require special licenses and subscription levels to access their APIs. We’ll talk more about those later.
For now, let’s take a brief look at what it would take for you to implement API integrations from scratch. This assumes that you already have a developer, or team of developers, on staff.
Before implementing an API integration, it’s best to outline what you need it to do and how you want it to function in your organization. Keep in mind, if you’re deciding to implement your own API integrations, you’ll need a high level of technical knowledge. With that stipulation, here is how you can outline a successful API integration:
As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into API integrations. And that’s just implementing one integration. Many organizations rely on multiple API integrations working seamlessly to streamline their workflows and processes. If this DIY method doesn’t sound like the way to go for your business, there are other ways to implement API integrations. Let’s delve into some of those methods.
There are several methods to implement API integrations in your organization. Here are a few of the most common:
As we mentioned in the last section, DIY data integrations are one way to go. However, unless you have an experienced automation team, this isn’t typically the most effective. Things can go wrong, integrations can take a long time to create, and the time spent can cost you more money in the long run. Typically, DIY integration isn’t the right path for most organizations.
API integration platforms have been a huge help to businesses that previously wouldn’t have been able to easily create their own API integrations or API integration tools. API integration platforms like Tray.io, Zapier, and UiPath have made it easier for businesses to connect their applications and share data between them.
Here’s a video example of how one of these platforms works:
As nice as these API platforms are, especially for small businesses, they still don’t necessarily cover every API integration need. For one, unless you have employees trained in these platforms, the more complicated or multi-faceted integrations are going to be difficult to figure out and implement. Also, if you’re needing custom API integrations, these platforms won’t be able to assist you there. So, although these platforms are highly beneficial and can solve a lot of simpler problems without needing experienced team members, they don’t cover every base.
For that, there are API integration service providers.
The best, most comprehensive, and impactful way to implement API integrations is through an API integration service provider. A service provider will be able to analyze your business and look at where API integrations and API integration platforms can make the most impact. There’s no second-guessing. Having professional eyes on your organization's processes can reveal beneficial API integrations you might not have even considered.
A service provider can build complicated integrations on top API integration platforms, they can connect custom APIs, and they can implement any API you have in mind. They can also find the APIs that you didn’t have in mind, but that will make a positive impact. On top of all this, they’ll be able to do it fast and with no errors. And once the integrations are done, you’ll have a source to turn to when you have questions, need new integrations, or need to scale up.
A service provider, like Bailey, will make sure your integrations are done right and that you save money on the implementation process in the long run.
In summary, API integrations have quickly become essential parts of any business. If you use multiple applications or software, you need API integrations to let these various systems communicate and share and exchange data.
If you have any questions about APIs and API integration services, feel free to get in touch with our team. We’d love to continue the discussion on this topic with you.
Remember, API integration solutions are crucial, and it benefits your organization to have them done right. Now that you know more about API integrations and how they connect your applications, you’ll appreciate the benefits even more once you implement them in your organization.
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