Bringing powerful connections to your supply chain pays—and it’s not as complicated as you might think. Reach out to an Elemica consultant and see how you can start transforming your supply chain today.
By: Arun Samuga, Chief Technology Officer
Many supply chain executives avoid the technical intricacies of back-end technology. However, it’s worthwhile to make an exception for the now-omnipresent Application Programmable Interface (API). Because this humble software innovation is not only improving supply chain connectivity and visibility on a global scale, but also creating tremendous strategic value.
An API is a piece of code serving as an intermediary between programs and digital environments, enabling the access of data and functions. In many ways, APIs act as interpreters between systems. Say, for instance as a purchaser, you want to order a blue box from your supplier. Well, your supplier categorizes that blue box as a “light blue box”, the API knows that when you say “blue box” you mean “light blue box”; translating the information and ensuring the right item is ordered.
These seemingly simple connections and interpretations, at scale, ensure that data can be shared, order processing can be streamlined, and thousands of emails can be avoided.
There are around 50,000 publicly available APIs. Amazon shipping notifications come via API—as do videos embedded in websites, the weather forecast on your car’s digital display or stock prices on your phone. Gartner estimates APIs perform 25 percent of all B2B interactions. And their growth rate is increasing. APIs can be written in any programming language, and either be made available publicly or used exclusively within one organization.
API providers concept, create and manage these digital intermediaries. API consumers make web and mobile apps, server interfaces, IoT-enabled devices and any other applications that need data from external sources. And others, like Elemica, act in both capacities, creating custom APIs and implementing them to connect client Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems with those of their suppliers and partners. Since APIs are machine-to-machine, end users never see them, instead these APIs continuously communicate in the background, silently streamlining processes between organizations.
APIs enable a digital supply chain in which everything from inventory levels to the location of a specific shipment on a truck to the status of a specific order or payment can be accessed in real-time. Enterprise stakeholders use APIs to ensure that supply chain data and actions are available to the systems and people who need them, at the right time, to make the best possible business decisions and reduce manual data handling along the entire supply chain.
Consider a company in search of greater supply chain efficiency. APIs can be used to connect their ERP system with that of their suppliers, carriers and other data sources, pulling together inventory and location data with weather, fleet status, and anticipated fulfillment requirements to help streamline transportation logistics. This sort of effort could employ hundreds of APIs connecting several disparate applications, places, objects, environments and systems.
At Elemica, we generally deploy four different classes of proprietary APIs on behalf of clients:
Countless APIs fall into each of these categories and support a variety of data connections to improve efficiency and gain visibility at every step of the supply chain across a broad set of suppliers, customers, and partners.
APIs provide a way to link digital ecosystems and technologies that goes beyond simplifying communication—improving business performance in a number of ways. APIs allow you to execute on business strategies more quickly, responsively, efficiently and cost-effectively. By sharing digital services with external organizations in a plug-and-play manner, growth rates are accelerated, scalability is streamlined, and technical infrastructure costs are fractionalized. From a balance sheet perceptive, strategic implementation of APIs can help you:
Of course, APIs must be maintained and organized responsibly like any other tool. That means building out management infrastructure that secures, controls and maintains programs in a systematic and strategic way. From concept to delivery to keeping up with changing security demands, many aspects of each API must be kept current. But these commitments are a small price for such a powerful and flexible way to deliver on strategy and better meet customer demands.
Why is this exciting now? After all, the API is 20 years old as of this year. Saleforce.com actually introduced the first, and even today makes an estimated 50 percent of its revenues from APIs (as a $17.1B company). The current excitement stems from a number of factors converging to create ideal conditions for API-enabled supply chain optimization. These factors include the maturation and propagation of a number of complementary “Industry 4.0” technologies such as AI and machine learning, extensive global application development, increased financial pressure, continuity directives, a better understanding of API optimization and a new generation of digital natives eager to empower the world through greater connectivity.
As a technology, the API’s time has come. And supply chains need them more than ever as stakeholders seek more reliability, flexibility and transparency. Now the question is, which enterprises and industries will be the next to leverage it at scale and change the game?
