What is an API?
The short answer is that it is a way for one computer program to talk to another.
The long answer starts with understanding the acronym. API stands for Application Programming Interface. The key word here is ‘interface.’ The API is a defined interface for interacting with the program. When interacting with an API, you can only use the interface that the API has exposed to you. API Interfaces may be blocked by what the program exposes in general or what the program exposes for you to use. As an example, consider the Twitter API. A program can use the Twitter API to read public tweets. However, it can only tweet for the user you authorize.
Why They Matter to Your Business
There are many software solutions available in the market that might solve some of your problems. There are two common problems with existing software. First, it might do most of what you want, but not everything. Second, if you have two or more pieces of software that you use, keeping track of information across multiple systems might be difficult.
Let’s look at the first issue. Sometimes a piece of software is very close to what you need but doesn’t do everything. This problem is where an API integration can add that last bit of functionality. Take Bloom School Pictures, for example. They use a web application that many other businesses in their industry use. It helps keep pictures organized and allows parents to purchase these pictures. However, after every shoot, they spent hours getting the folders and passwords set up correctly. Creating an entirely new piece of software to do everything their current software does would be a huge undertaking. However, using the API of their existing system, I developed a simple software solution that generated the folders and passwords based on a student list. This solution saved hours of work after every shoot, meaning they could focus on other parts of their business.
Now let’s look at the second common problem, getting two systems to talk to each other. Often you might use a few pieces of software to run your business. The most common example is probably a website and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software such as Salesforce. If your website has a contact form, it probably sends you an email when someone uses it, and you manually enter them as a lead in your CRM. But what if you could remove that manual step of entering it? What if your website contact form could automatically use your CRM’s API to enter that lead? Another typical example is when you have two systems you use, and you need to keep customer contact information updated in both of them. An API integration could help by allowing you only to have to enter that data in one system, and it gets automatically updated in the other.
One thing many companies tend to forget is efficiency. If your business can save a few hours a week due to efficiency, you use that time for opportunities that grow revenue. There are probably a few API integrations that your business could do to save time.
