Organisations in EMEA using Advanced API Management Processes Experience up to 45 percent Better Business Results

Organisations in EMEA with advanced API management processes experience up to 45 percentbetter 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 percent more organisations report an improvement in customer experience moving from basic to advanced API management, while customer satisfaction increases by an additional 33 percent and IT costs fall by a further 31 percent. Respondents in advanced organisations are also more than twiceas likely to express confidence about differentiating themselves from competitors (82 percent versus 36 percent).

 

“APIs are a cornerstone of business agility, enabling organisations to drive rapid, continuous improvement in customer experience and be ‘Built to Change’,” HishamMalak, Director of Operationas, 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 lifecycle approach to API management, organisations see significant improvements in customer experience, customer satisfaction and competitive differentiation.”

Application programming interfaces (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 lifecycle, 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 lifecycle management.

Other Key Findings:

• 93 percent of advanced API management users witness an improvement in customer experience compared to 64 percent for basic users;
• 86 percent of advanced API management users report an improvement in their leverage of third-party developer innovation compared to 68 percent for basic users;
• Advanced API management users experience a 40 percent increase in customer satisfaction compared to 30 percent for basic users;
• Advanced API management users experience a 38 percent reduction in IT-related costs compared to 29 percent for basic users

Conversational commerce

The study also shows that 69 percent 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 percent of organisations across EMEA have now adopted APIs, and this widespread use is focused—among many processes—on driving revenue growth (cited by 32 percent) and delivering speed and innovation via third-party APIs (32 percent).

The result is increased business agility. According to the study, EMEA organisations are seeing a 33 percent 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 in remain though. The major barriers are the lack of skilled resources (cited by 34 percent), the time needed to develop an API (32 percent) and the ability to scale usage/manage performance (31 percent).

“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.