The API economy is an approach to digital transformation that enables organizations to open up their internal capabilities and data to an ecosystem of developers, partners and employees, in order to create new products and services. This approach enables companies to monetize their internal assets, create new revenue streams and foster innovation.

In simple terms, API Economy is about making services and data available via APIs in order to generate new value and revenue streams for your company. The API economy value chain does not just expose your business internal assets to internal users, it can expose them to business partners, third-party developers, or the general public. The API economy consists of providers, consumers, APIs, and products that are integrated with them.

Within an API economy driven mindset, APIs become the default tool that organizations use to open up enterprise capabilities to the wider ecosystem of developers, partners, and employees in order to build new experiences for customers. Having these goals in mind, organizations can create and attract an entire ecosystem of developers, partners and employees that will adopt their APIs and re-use them to create new products and services.

The Power of APIs in the Digital Economy

APIs are quickly becoming one of the main products a company has to offer; in fact, APIs themselves contain the core value the business provides its users or partners, whereas the digital channel merely becomes the medium where a brand-consumer relationship takes place. The digital economy, and the engagement within it, is being created, not from brand-new software assets, but mostly from exposing core assets differently. The API economy involves the exposing of an organization's digital services and assets via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in a controlled manner.

7 Key Questions to Unlock the API Economy

Given the boost it might mean for your business, which steps and checks do you need to take part in this APIs as a Product (AaaP) mindset?

✔️ Do we have a target audience for our APIs?

Who will be able to benefit from what we’re developing? Is the possible market for this willing to have strategic partners like us and actually use what we have to offer? Did we do our homework to see if there will be traction for this?

✔️ Are we having the API first mindset?

If there is a need for what we might provide, are we already developing APIs in a “API first” mindset? Do we have guidelines for developing APIs, including good practices for easy to use, well documented and secure APIs?

✔️ What platform can support our new APIs? What is the best medium to monetize them?

This comes down to the API Management platform you want to use. It is crucial that you build your API marketplace with the right provider; one that is flexible, scalable and with strong security features.

✔️ How should you price our APIs and handle payments?

It’s important you recognize the value of your offering and balance that with the costs you might have running and developing the APIs. Will you charge per call, per month, per year? Who can handle these metrics and analysis so you can generate revenue?

✔️ Do we have a marketing plan set up?

Just like a retail product, an API product is more valuable and profitable if it is known to its target audience. Having a good marketing strategy and an easy way for prospective customers to access your offering is key to getting it sold.

✔️ Do we have Customer support?

When an API is made available, and it becomes a product, you need to provide customer support. Due to their nature, APIs as a Product enable deep integrations between different products and sometimes even ecosystems. This makes them extremely valuable but, at the same time, expectations regarding their usage without any issues are also very high. There needs to be dedicated customer support for any issues that might occur, otherwise you might affect the trust of consumers using your marketplace.

✔️ Are we willing to continuously improve our APIs?

As your customer base grows, new requests and feature requests will come your way in order to improve an existing API or expand your API offering. Addressing this customer feedback becomes a good way of retaining customers and attracting new ones.

Empowering Developers and Businesses with apinity marketplace

Having the right partner can determine a successful entry into the API economy. With the apinity marketplace you have an all round tool to publish, advertise, secure & control your API usage.

The apinity marketplace acts like a discovery tool for APIs to developers from the insurance industry or other regulated industries; it allows them to plug in, and helps companies to discover which APIs they are using, all the while also analyzing how well they are performing.

While doing this it also provides you a standard framework for developing & publishing your APIs, managing their lifecycles and adding extra security layers.

With our analytics offering, you have full visibility of the usage of your APIs; you can construct use cases based on their usage and gather insights that could be valuable for your business. This holistic overview of your offering also allows us to provide you the accurate billing of your API usage.

In combination with our analytics module our customer support team acts as a helpful intermediary in quickly determining issues with your APIs, available through the marketplace.

We reduce the overhead of having a dedicated support team to handle customers directly, by allowing a first stage evaluation of the current status of your APIs published with us.

All in all the apinity marketplace is a great partner to start your adventure in the API economy. Reach out to us to learn more and download the apinity factsheet now!