How Archers inspired this organization to evangelize their APIs

We recently worked together with an organization on their API Management Program.

They already had a good track record with integration. This was mostly application to application work and some partner integrations as well. However, much of their effort had gone towards the technical aspects of integration, mostly vendor related. Things like architectural oversight and guidance or design patterns were not part of their approach.

Some departments already started working on developing APIs and decisions makers and business leaders understood their importance. Gradually, APIs became more important to the product and service line up, and they wanted to make sure they took all the right actions.

We were given the opportunity to guide them in the rollout of their API Management program.

During discussions with the program manager he expressed additional concerns about the perception of the position of the API platform. He wanted to ensure that the program was supported by the right communication and looked at Archers for inspiration.

As stated, each team and department was already convinced of the role of APIs, but we now needed to promote the role and purpose of the central platform to different stakeholders. This question is summarized in the following expression:

“API Management as an enabler for our digital customer journeys”

The following image depicts a fairly typical situation for APIs. Different teams and departments build and deploy APIs. On the API platform they are made available to the internal ecosystem. Different APIs are combined to create digital customer journeys.

Although the API platform contained many capabilities, we decided to focus on three key capabilities. These represent the core elements in the creation and support of their digital customer journeys.

Three roles benefit the most from the aforementioned capabilities.

Developers are always under pressure to build solutions faster and more efficient. Business and users want their features as fast as possible. One way of getting your work done faster, is to use what is already there. Reusing existing APIs can speed up time-to-market significantly. Additionally, the API producer increases its reach within the ecosystem en benefits from the feedback to improve or expand its API functionality and data.

Product managers continuously want to improve existing products and services but also create new ones. Having access to the entire collection of available APIs can help them create and design new digital products faster and easier.

The last role is the digital strategist. For this organization the digital strategist is focused on innovation and experimentation. They will look to combine new and cutting edge technologies with existing building blocks. The available APIs exposed via the developer portal provide a clear overview of what is available within the organization. The digital strategist does not have to look elsewhere for specific functionality or data.