API — all that you need to know about API to join the automation revolution
API is one of the hot topics of everyday business, indicated as the tech trend # 1 of the future. Since 2000, when the first API was born in the world, millions of companies have started using this easily scalable solution.
Why API is a hot topic especially in business?
The answer to this question might be very, very long. But to make it short, we can say that API is being considered as hope or a chance.
A hope to get access to key information here and now. A long-expected chance for process automation resulting in a saving of human and time resources. A chance for data integration in various departments of companies. A chance for acceleration of customer service, resulting in increased customer satisfaction. The possibility of developing your own API-based products. These are just some of the reasons for which Application Programming Interfaces are of such high interest nowadays in a wide range of industries.
In this article about API, we introduce the subject from A to Z, focusing primarily on the API that provides company data from Corporate Registries and Companies Houses, as far as tech-driven regulatory company data is one of the solutions of our company, Transparent Data.
What exactly is an API
When a well-designed API is implemented, in the end, it usually translates into faster growth. This is its basic yet super powerful value. However, what is the mysterious API exactly?
In the dictionary, we read that the Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of rules and descriptions in which computer programs can communicate with each other, that is, share data. On one side is a man asking a question. On the other side a technology that instantly gives the answer.
API is like a river of information
Thanks to the constant flow of fresh information, the API is like a river. Data flows to your systems, being constantly updated. In opposition to traditional manual information databases resembling standing lakes, the API eliminates situations in which the information on the basis of which you make decisions are outdated and incomplete.
In a sense, we can say that API is a technologically programmed tube through which data bits flow bi-directionally.
Like every pipe, the API has two ends — one on the company’s side, which sends specific queries through the API, and the other on the data provider’s side, which gives answers to those queries. A bit like in a phone conversation — the signal runs through the cable so that each of the interlocutors could hear a voice in their earpiece.
API and real-time data
With reference to the above introduction, we can confidently say that real-time is something that responds to our everyday needs. You want something here and now — you get it through the API. You say you have. No waiting, no manual effort, no need to involve additional human or monetary resources.
The “real-time” means nothing but constant access to always actual information.
In a more technical language, real-time is often translated as such a level of computer responsiveness that a user asking any question / doing any action immediately receives the most possible, current answer. The answer, which is not generated from any fixed information database that a given person updates from time to time. The answer that the system automatically generates based on the information contained in the original sources like official corporate registries.
The mechanism itself is known to all of us perfectly, even if we do not realize it — real-time work ATMs and news boards on Twitter and Facebook!
Speed matters!
Real-time data means that finding a company by register number takes less than 0.001 second and searching 12 million database to find a company by name (including typos, errors and eliminating 50 companies with almost the same name) takes less than 4 seconds.
How many people need to do it manually, in a traditional way?
How long would it take them?
This is the importance of speed. The importance of automation. The real value of real-time technology and API.
If you had to check 100 companies “for yesterday” or verify 50,000 TAX numbers in one day, you already understand it.
API effect — why is everyone talking about it?
API allows for the rapid exchange of information in real time placing those who master its application as marker leaders. It’s a game changer for both your internal processes as well as external communication with your clients or suppliers.
API takes tech businesses to a new level of superfast communication speeding up just about everything it gets connected to.
Nothing improves internal processes more than integrating different data entry standards into one universal and consistent standard at the central level. For example, our API organizes data from various ERP systems from sales CRMs to accounting programs, so that all departments and companies operating within one group are based on compatible, clean and non-doubled information.
Is API an adventure for you?
Well, you might have doubts if your organization really needs API. Or if your departments are ready to use it. But being a leader is not easy.
You have to stay ahead of the game, innovate and grasp opportunities. If there is a secret to success, it is the ability to see opportunities.
So the decision is yours — discover or not the opportunities offered by an API.
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