By now, you’ve likely heard a lot about API integration, but you might be asking yourself exactly how does this technology work and why is it important to the digital world?
API integration is found almost everywhere you look in the digital world these days and creates a nearly seamless interaction into the many different entities working in unison in our well-connected world.
In this piece, we are going to go over five different things that you might not know about API integrations and how they work. Follow along to find out!
API Integrations Are Used by Nearly Every Single Digital Entity
Have you ever wondered what happens when you make an online purchase? How does the whole transaction take place from the time your credit card is ran through the receipt that comes to your email?
That’s all due to API integrations. The many different processes are all intertwined digitally to run simultaneously. When you hit submit on your order, your credit card is run by one application, while another sends the order to process, and another sends confirmation to you.
While this is a very simplistic explanation of one application of API integration, think of this from the perspective of the big picture and how many different tasks you complete online. API integration is required for nearly all of them.
API Integrations Work Seamlessly
The very nature of API integrations are seamless in design and implied to work in an automated fashion, without large intervention by humans. The convenience of this allows any online process to move quickly, without major support.
The reason this is beneficial is due to the 24/7 nature of the web and its interconnectedness around the globe. Using the example from above, a online retailer can accept orders seamlessly from around the world at any hour of the day.
This allows them to still run their business, even when nobody is in the office. The transaction has been recorded, the money collected, and fulfillment sent so the order can be packed and shipped as soon as someone is available to do it. All thanks to API integrations.
API Integration Can Help Scale Your Start-Up
One of the best ways that you can scale your business is to start with processes and systems that have already been created, troubleshot, and implemented elsewhere around the world.
This is why API integration is such a necessary step for fledgling businesses to implement. With a little legwork, you can set up systems through integration, so you don’t have to start from scratch and create your own.
While there will be a little bit of cost for this, this light cost will far outweigh the costs of building your own software and digital systems. The extra resources you will have from API integrations will allow you to build your business and work on things that will help you grow.
It is advised by many top experts that all businesses operate with some sort of API integrations, no matter the size or scope.
API Integration Consolidates and Provides Visibility to Data
With API integration, you can also have systematic and consistent data all fetched from different sources and consolidated into one single application.
This is extremely beneficial to users that are looking at sales numbers, velocity, and revenues in order to best make business decisions for growth. There is nothing that is quite as frustrating as having to look in several different places in order to analyze data that you need.
By having it all in one location, you don’t have to worry about that. API integration makes it possible to have everything you need delivered to one place, saving you time and energy.
API Integration Reduces Human Error
One of the very best benefits of API integration is the inherent ability to reduce or eliminate human error. By automating various functions, you eliminate human error, which in turn increases functionality of your team and speeds your processes.
Automated systems can assemble and pour through far more data and with greater velocity and accuracy than a human ever could. In regard to your business, this means that people can spend time focusing on growth and only the most manual of functions of your business.
You need not worry about the small details that could be messed up like processing payments, accounting errors, or even correct order entry, API integration will take care of all of that without anyone hardly having to lift a finger.
Conclusion
While this is simply a high-level overview of some things you may not have known about API integrations, we think that this information is invaluable when it comes to implementing it for your uses. API Integration is one of the greatest technological advances of our time, and any business should be taking advantage of the benefits.
