Organisations in EMEA with advanced API (application programming interfaces) management processes experience up to 45% better business results than those with basic API management. This is the major finding from a new global study, ‘APIs: Building a Connected Business in the App Economy’, commissioned by CA Technologies among 1,770 senior executives, including 695 in EMEA.
Some 45% more organisations report an improvement in customer experience moving from basic to advanced API management, while customer satisfaction increases by an additional 33% and IT costs fall by a further 31%. Respondents in advanced organisations are also more than twice as likely to express confidence about differentiating themselves from competitors (82% versus 36%).
“APIs are a cornerstone of business agility, enabling organisations to drive rapid, continuous improvement in customer experience and be ‘Built to Change’,” Hisham Malak, Director of Operations, CA MENA. This research makes a compelling case for API use – and more importantly, for having a sophisticated approach to managing the APIs. By adopting an advanced, full life cycle approach to API management, organisations see significant improvements in customer experience, customer satisfaction and competitive differentiation.”
APIs are the central nervous system of the app economy. By allowing pieces of software to communicate with each other, they provide ready-made, universal access to whatever functionality an organisation needs to deliver. The growing use of APIs calls for a formalised approach to API management, which encompasses creating, securing, managing and optimising APIs throughout their life cycle and at enterprise scale.
With this in mind, the study’s API management maturity model assesses how far organisations have implemented the tools and technologies, systems and processes and the capabilities required for full API life cycle management.
Other key findings:
• 93% of advanced API management users witness an improvement in customer experience compared to 64% for basic users
• 86% of advanced API management users report an improvement in their leverage of third-party developer innovation compared to 68% for basic users
• Advanced API management users experience a 40% increase in customer satisfaction compared to 30% for basic users
• Advanced API management users experience a 38% reduction in IT-related costs compared to 29% for basic users
Conversational commerce
The study also shows that 69% of EMEA organisations report an improvement in their ability to leverage third-party developer innovation using APIs. By opening up and sharing select applications with third-parties, these organisations are absorbing data from partners and adding essential services to their apps – without having to write new code. Among these innovations are ‘conversational commerce’ services that enable consumers to interact with brands or aggregated services using chat, messaging or other natural-language interfaces. For example, instructing your mobile device using natural language to book a flight and aggregating different services together to book a preferred hotel, restaurant or taxi partner at the destination.
Widespread API adoption and increased agility – but barriers remain
Some 90% of organisations across EMEA have now adopted APIs and this widespread use is focused – among many processes – on driving revenue growth (cited by 32%) and delivering speed and innovation via third-party APIs (32%).
The result is increased business agility. According to the study, EMEA organisations are seeing a 33% increase in business agility (i.e. speed to market) from their API efforts – reducing the time to develop/test and release new apps from an average of 10.80 weeks to 7.25 weeks.
Barriers to API adoption remain though. The major barriers are the lack of skilled resources (cited by 34%), the time needed to develop an API (32%) and the ability to scale usage/manage performance (31%).
“The digital revolution is prompting opportunities to offer new products, create platforms to deliver services and provide better experiences to customers – all by using APIs. While APIs themselves are not a new innovation, it’s more important than ever in the digital economy to manage them effectively. That unified approach to management enables companies of all sizes, in all sectors, to level the competitive playing field and cope better with the rising volume, scale and volatility of customer-facing apps,” says Malak.
