What Should You Look For in A Unified API Platform?

Every SaaS company knows the difficulty of building and managing all integrations in-house. It  not only puts unnecessary strain on your engineering teams and resources but also leads to (avoidable) financial cost. 

Using a unified API platform can help you achieve integration success without spending unnecessary bandwidth or money. Let’s have a look at what a unified API platform is and what things you must check to make the right choice.

What is a unified API?

A unified API platform helps companies integrate the various applications, systems and software they use in a single, centralized platform. Such a platform makes the communication and exchange of data between the different applications seamless, quick and effective. With a unified API, data flow gets extremely streamlined, and it eliminates the need to manage multiple points of contacts for integrations. 

Of course, building all integrations in-house  is an alternative solution, when the number of integrations increase exponentially, individual connections can be difficult (and impractical) to manage and maintain from a technical standpoint. A unified API platform takes the friction out of such integration management with low-code or no-code solutions to reduce complexities and centralize integration management.  

Why do you need a unified API

 In any SaaS company, developers should focus on the core product roadmap – enhancing its features and usability Everything else, including building and maintaining integrations, becomes a non-core activity. 

Before we move onto the factors that should influence your unified API choice, let’s look at some of the real life advantages: 

1. Ease of extraction & transformation 

An integral part of data exchange that integrations rely on revolves around ETL or extraction, transformation and load. When performed manually for disparate applications, the processes can be highly time consuming. However, a unified integration platform can centralize the processes together and enable real-time data insights. It can automatically facilitate the extraction of data from operating systems like the ERP or the CRM and simultaneously transform it for effective use by different applications and systems within the platform. It reduces the burden on engineering teams to extract legacy data and automates the process of cleansing it to improve data quality and consistency for use by different applications. 

2. Improved efficiency

In addition to the ease of extraction and transformation, a unified API platform adds efficiency to the way businesses or developers leverage integrations. On the one hand, as it automates the process and reduces manual data entry, the incidence of errors and data contamination become significantly low. On the other hand, unified APIs facilitate data flow in real-time in different formats and protocols  while maintaining accuracy and timeliness, allowing applications and systems to exchange and access different data sets instantly. Companies no longer have to focus on data format similarity.

3. Reduced time-to-market and costs

A unified API  can help companies significantly reduce their time to market with new integrations that are needed with changing business realities. It can enable business agility by ensuring that new applications and systems are integrated in real-time with pre-built connectors without the need to build the integration API from scratch.

At the same time, costs associated with integrations also come down when companies use unified APIs. On the one hand, the cost of manual data entry and costs associated with errors is significantly reduced with automated data exchange. On the other hand, without a unified API , companies have to bear the monetary burden of maintaining multiple point-to-point connectors for data exchange between applications. Building an in-house integration can take anywhere between 2 weeks to 3 months. With a developer salary ranging from USD 80K to USD 125K, each integration can cost USD 10K to companies. At the same time, building it in-house can delay your core product offering by 3-6 months, putting you at a market disadvantage. 

What to look for in  a unified API solution 

Now that you understand how a unified integration platform can assist your product roadmap journey and facilitate business success, let’s look at some of the features your unified API tool must have .

1. Security and resilience

Start by understanding the security protocols in place for the unified API to ensure the confidentiality and security of your and your client’s data. 

Since the API tool  will have access to all the data that goes through your different applications, you need to ensure that the platform has robust security measures like risk based security, data encryption at rest/ in transit, least privilege security, continuous logging and access controls. Lack of effective security measures can render you vulnerable to security threats and data breaches. 

At the same time, check out whether or not the platform meets the security norms and compliances for your industry. Check the necessary certifications. Additionally, you must understand the security considerations and data access the platform has for your end customers, for how long it stores their data, what data it stores, etc. 

From a security lens, focus on the security posture of the platform for your as well as your end customer’s data, as they may not consent to data storage by a third-party application. Thus, be cognizant of these considerations and understand the security measures to address the same. 

2. Scalability

The main purpose behind using a unified APIis to ensure that you are able to efficiently manage large numbers of integrations and high volumes of data. Therefore, a key feature to look out for is scalability. There are two forces at play here. 

First, you need to check if the platform is able to take the load of your current and future integrations. This suggests you must ensure if it can manage the complexities of managing multiple integrations, a situation that may arise when you add a lot of integrations based on customer expectations. At the same time, you should gauge the number of integrations it is able to manage at once and the potential to add more as time passes. 

Second, the scalability test must understand the volume of data being processed by the platform. As data comes in from diverse sources at a high pace, the platform must support processing of high volume data in seconds. This can be accomplished with batch processing. You must ensure that the platform can easily support high volume requests. 

3. Compatibility 

When you use multiple applications and systems, the data and protocols you receive can be in a variety of types and formats. To facilitate real-time processing and data flow, the unified API platform must be compatible with different formats and should be able to process information accurately. Various protocols could include HTTP, FTP, and SFTP, and there can be different data formats, such as XML, CSV, and JSON. The objective is to ensure that while the sources of data might be different, leading to differences in the types of data you receive, the data which is loaded to other applications must be compatible with their understanding for processing and decision making. 

4. Ease of use and customer experience

The unified API platform that you choose should be easy to deploy, use and manage with a user-friendly and intuitive interface. If the tool requires a lot of technical knowledge to run, it will again eat into the bandwidth of your engineering team. Look for an API that is extremely low-code or nearly no-code to ensure that you don’t have to hire an entire technical team to run your integrations. Most unified APIs have a drag and drop UI, which makes the implementation of integrations very easy and reduces the dependency on technical teams for execution. 

Another factor is the customer experience that the unified API brings along. Since your end customers will be using the integrations, the experience they have will make a lot of difference when it comes to choosing the right platform. How well the customers are able to engage with the integrations and how well the integrations serve their business purposes via the unified platform can be a big defining factor.

At the same time, in case an integration breaks down, i.e. when either the API key becomes invalid or API experiences time out, your unified API platform must be able to seamlessly manage the customer experience flow. Before making a decision, you need to check how well the API tool in consideration ensures uninterrupted customer business even in times of integration breakdown or how quickly it is able to resolve the breakdown. 

Thus, when it comes to choosing the right unified API, make sure that it is easy to use, with low or no-code functionalities and preferably with a drag and drop interface. And look for options that have a proven track record of great customer experience to get an idea of whether or not the platform is able to meet expectations. 

5. Cost 

Another important parameter to look out for while choosing a unified API is the cost. There are several cost components for any platform and you need to check how much will the platform cost you in total, from deployment to end customer use. 

• Some of the costs include an upfront cost for set up and implementation. 
• Next, there may be subscription or monthly charges that you will pay to the platform vendor for using the services for providing integrations to your customers. 
• Finally, there might be some additional or incremental charges for some integrations that you might wish to add later in your product journey. At the same time, you might want to check if the platform has extra costs or charges for providing technical support that your team, especially non-technical persons, might need. 

The cost can be based on connectors being used or CPU usages or data volume or number of users. Understand the pricing structure of the platform and do an in-depth study of your needs as well. Depending on the pricing structure, select the one which suits your budget the most. In general, it is a good practice to choose the platform which does not have constraints on the data volume or where cost is not a direct function of the data volume. 

Also Read: ROI of Unified API and Build vs Buy: What is the ideal approach to SaaS integration (for you)

6. API / SDK documentation

The platform should provide adequate API or SDK (software development kit) documentation. The SDK documentation is important to ensure that your engineering team has the right information to get started. While the unified API tool  is likely to be low-code with a drag and drop interface, you will still need information about the APIs, other components and even simple example codes to help you get started. 

The SDK documentation will help you understand how you can use the various components and functionalities of the API platform to run the various integrations you need. It will also have information on how to configure the platform and integrations as well as the APIs. 

7. Customer support 

A unified API solution  must offer robust support to help you address any challenges that you might face with the various integrations you use. There are many examples of this support here. 

• First, if there is any error during any process for any integration, the error message should be displayed very clearly and appropriately. It should be in a language you understand and should be easy to communicate to others in the team as well. 
• Second, once the error becomes clear, the customer support should help you with very clear solutions. It should have crisp directions or guidance on the next steps to address the challenges. The idea is to ensure that all errors are addressed quickly without any lag to ensure good customer experience.
• Third, the dashboard must have adequate technical resources and documents which can help you stay on top of common errors and ways to resolve them on your end without contacting the customer support team every time. This will help reduce glitches and bugs in minimum time. 
• Finally, the platform’s technical assistance must be present 24/7 as reliable customer support to assist you in case the shared solution is unclear or your team is unable to implement it. 

Thus, the customer support should ensure that you do not have to deploy additional engineering bandwidth and any error is solved without any friction in a timely manner to reduce lag or delays. 

8. Future roadmap and past record

At a macro level, the unified API solution is itself an application or a software that will get upgraded from time to time. You need to understand the impact of such upgrades on your business. Consider two major factors here. 

First, try to understand the future roadmap of the product. As a platform, are there any expansion plans on the map? Check if the platform has any plan to add more functionalities or support any new integrations that you might want to implement for your company as well. You would want to choose a platform that has a robust plan for growth in the future and not one which has reached its potential, since the market and customer expectations will keep growing. Furthermore, you might want to check if you can influence the product roadmap for the platform in some way to better meet your business needs. 

Second, you need to be equally focused on the historical records of the platform whenever it underwent an upgrade. When an application adds new functionalities or upgrades, there is a chance that existing processes or functionalities get impacted. It could be the addition of new connectors or security upgrades, etc. However, the best platforms ensure negligible or no impact on existing integrations. Therefore, choose a platform which has had a successful history of upgrades to prevent any negative impact on integrations you are using. 

These are some of the things you should look out for while choosing a unified integration platform. You can fall back on customer reviews, case studies and delve into technical assistance for better decision making. Try to research which successful companies are using the unified integration platform in question and how it has enabled them to scale their business with integrations. Also, check which platforms are being used by companies in your domain or the ones that use applications like yours. Finally, it is always best to try and see it for yourself. So, opt for API tools that offer free trials to review and recheck everything you have seen or read about the tool so far.

Wrapping up: TL:DR

As we conclude, it is clear that a unified API platform helps organizations deploy, manage and use different applications and systems from a single, centralized dashboard. It enables:

• Easy data extraction and transformation
• Improved efficiency by real-time and error free data exchange
• Reduced time to market and cost savings

However, the key to integration success lies in choosing the right API tool. When choosing one, look out for:

• Security and resilience to ensure that the data exchange for your company and your customers is safe and secure and is not vulnerable to unauthorized access
• Scalability to check if the platform can meet high volume processing for your current and future integration needs
• Compatibility with different types of data formats and protocols to ensure accuracy during data exchange
• Ease of use for deployment and implementation with a drag and drop interface and low to no-code functionalities
• Pleasant customer experience for your end users
• Overall costs including upfront set up, monthly subscription and additional costs for future integrations/ customer support
• SDK documentation with information of APIs and other components to successfully configure and use platform without reliance on technical skills
• Robust customer support with online resources, technical assistance and clear error messages with appropriate solutions to prevent any lag
• Future roadmap and records to ensure that platform upgrades lead to no or minimal impact on existing integrations

If you keenly look out for these factors, you will easily be able to compare the various platforms and select the right one for your needs. Make sure you have a clear idea of the integrations you need for your customers to map the scope for factors like cost, documentation, scalability, security, etc.

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