All aboard the API train! How APIs became our core business strategy — Joan News
Before diving in and developing an API, everyone in the company needs to know what an API is and what it represents in terms of business potential. If the C-level doesn’t understand the value an API can bring and if you don’t have a business case for it, then it’s not the time yet.
Getting everyone on the API train was crucial for us. Aligning our business strategy with development equally so.
What’s an API?
An Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of computer interfaces that can be used to tie together various applications and services. It’s something you add to your application or service if you want to make it interoperable with the whole wide world. And it’s something you add to your product if you want to grow.
The business potential of an API
Some businesses see APIs as a sure-fire way to expand their core product and its value proposition. It’s a self-catering system that’s part of their DNA. They’re either relying on external APIs or building their own internal or external ones. This is our case.
Objective 1: Furthering Joan’s business objective
Our main objective is to make Joan, our display for booking meeting rooms, a progressive agent of office intelligence and that’s why building an API fits right in.
It enables our customers to connect all their work tools to it and enjoy a seamless workplace experience that enhances their productivity and helps them work better, faster and with more comfort.
We asked our customers what they wanted developed and half of the votes went into the API jar. We were rooting for it anyway but we had no idea our customers would be just as excited.
Objective 2: Lightning-fast functionality
Our focus is creating a great user experience. We want to build new functionality the fast way and make it easy for our customers to integrate Joan with products and software they use every day. From Slack, LIFX lights, CMSs to Alexa, Google Home, etc.; the integrations are limitless.
But no matter how fast you are, you’ll never be able to meet the needs of every single customer. Having an external API will give you and your customers the freedom to customize your software and grant user requests in a matter of days.
The API strategy in steps
The value of creating an API is clear. The steps of doing it right in terms of business and development however might not be as obvious. This is what we saw worked for us.
Step 1: Research and gather data
Set up landing pages, send out newsletters, engage your customers and monitor the traffic to see if the appetite for an API is real.
We opted for surveys, wrote up a few docs and shared them with our partners before committing our development efforts towards creating an API.
We then prioritized what needed to be built first. This was crucial so we could cover the most critical functionalities our product was missing straight away.
Step 2: Develop and gather feedback
When you get your API to the point where it’s functional, show it to your partners, customers or the interested public immediately. Don’t wait. Even if it feels improvised a little bit.
Add features as you go along and perfect things later. Velocity here is more important than anything else.
A steady stream of insights helps you grow your API. For us, TQ, a vibrant tech community in Amsterdam, founded by The Next Web, was incremental. The guys and girls at the TQ house were actually the first to request an API.
We already knew we wanted to extend the app with some integrations, like Slack for example, but TQ provided the feedback we needed to steer development until we talked again for the next sprint. It was product-market fit in action and a growth-hacking strategy all in one. And what was even better, it was almost free, minus development costs.
First, we worked on a couple of core functionalities on which we could build, like retrieving basic device information (list of devices, battery status, room information, …), before moving on to more complex requests and responses, like booking a meeting or finding a free room for a certain timeslot. This all contributed to a more enjoyable customer experience and created a platform for TQ to go wild with their own ideas as well.
TQ kept us in the loop with regular updates from their end as well: “Hi! Quick heads up — we are creating our own monitoring network with automatic slack notifications if the battery is empty. Great API!”
Step 3: Expose your API
Open APIs put companies directly in front of third parties they don’t necessarily have a business relationship with. This means reaching and expanding your potential market as well as opening up the possibility for partnerships that you didn’t even know were possible.
When your API is operational, send it out into the world. By giving access to your API, you will benefit from the third party developer ecosystem and you’ll be able to build new functionality more easily.
It’s impossible to work with an API without documentation. Providing a clear, organized overview of what the API enables is vital. All the rules, authentication instructions, endpoints, resources, etc. need to be there. We made the documentation interactive so developers have the ability to test while integrating the API.
Providing some more information on how to work with an API also goes a long way so developers can jump right in. For that purpose, we created a short Quick Start Guide and added a gif.
You could be integrating your software with a company that will ultimately help you sell more of your product or you’ll be opening up a new revenue stream by developing further on an integration that will help that company sell more of their own. In any way, the dev effort is relatively low when compared to its potential value.
The API benefits
- increased reach, traffic
- new revenue streams
- shared R&D
- time, money saved
- happier customers, a better user experience
Using third party APIs helps you fast-track development and add features that would otherwise take months or even years to build if you did it by yourself. The time-to-market is shorter, which means money saved and opportunities multiplied. Huge companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Braintree have done this and have reaped the benefits.
Using external APIs is cheaper than developing everything from scratch yourself, especially if it’s something that’s already been invented and others have done a great or flat-out better job at it than you could have done.
It will get you up to speed faster and save your company money and resources, which you can then invest into something else, like developing your own API for example.
Smaller, faster, more agile, data-driven companies are overtaking huge companies by taking the API route and creating a welcome disruption in the tech space. It turns out the smaller bird has exactly the same chance of catching the worm too.
APIs — the pipelines for the 21st century gold: data
APIs have skyrocketed in the last few years and show no signs of slowing down. They’ve changed how software is being created and brought to market for good. With all the hype, it’s hard to believe there are still products without APIs. Especially, since when you come down to it, they’re relatively easy to make.
Small, independent, modular code is assembled into more complex applications, allowing developers to focus on core functionalities and surround those with full-fledged services developed by other specialists and accessed through APIs.
This is how it’s done. Not only do you retain focus but you’re also faster at delivering what you wanted to and what you’re good at in the first place. Focus and velocity. A win-win.
While connected devices continue to flood the market, users are looking for ways of integrating them into a system that would bring them more value, save them some time and make their lives easier.
APIs make this happen. They’re the secret to growth and a key factor of success since they have been born from a genuine user need.
