Charlotte Tyrer

Prolifics’ UK Head of Technology, Marc Edwards, named as MuleSoft Retail GTM Champion. 

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, MAY 26th, 2022 – London Software Engineering and digital integration company, Prolifics has been named as a MuleSoft Go-To-Market (GTM) Champion, demonstrating their expert knowledge and experience in solving digital integration challenges for the retail industry.

GTM Champions bring experience and insight across the technology landscape. They work with a cross-functional team to develop a joint go-to-market strategy and spend several weeks establishing this joint approach to help clients understand how MuleSoft, provider of the leading integration, API, and automation platform, can accelerate their digital transformation

Prolifics created an API-led integration strategy, enabled by MuleSoft, that addresses the growing need to integrate non-traditional order fulfilment channels and provide a ‘single view of stock’ as an enabler to improved order conversion and customer satisfaction. The unique case study successfully enabled Prolifics to be named as a GTM Champion for the retail industry in the first MuleSoft GTM cohort.

The credential was awarded after a stringent process which saw Prolifics meet strict criterion, including skill in applying the MuleSoft for a real-world, digital business use case. The award was backed up by internal recommendations from the larger MuleSoft team, based on innovation, experience and positive outcomes from MuleSoft engagements.

Frank Mulligan, Prolifics UK General Manager commented:

“We are incredibly proud of Marc receiving this credential from the MuleSoft team; it is a testament to our commitment of providing innovative, market-leading solutions for the retail industry.”

“Prolifics have decades of experience within both integration and retail, working with the UK’s largest retailers as a trusted partner to their business goals, through our global commitment to innovation and digital engineering proficiency.”

Prolifics UK Head of Technology, Marc Edwards, formally Head of Technology at The Very Group, was chosen to represent the London digital integration specialists and provide key insight into some of the retail innovation conducted by the Prolifics Global Innovation Centre, while demonstrating a deep understanding of the retail landscape, helping cement Prolifics’ retail-specialist GTM status.

Mr Edwards commented:

“I’m thrilled to be named as a MuleSoft GTM Retail Champion. Our proposed solution demonstrates a small segment of Prolifics ability to solve serious industry problems, that are often rooted in poor integrations.

“By using MuleSoft, we help our clients to build reusable APIs and services, enabling them to become a composable business through reuse, agility and flexibility.”

The GTM credential means that Prolifics will be closely partnered with MuleSoft and their new and existing retail clients, to realise business value through best practice, accelerators, consultancy and innovative solutions using the MuleSoft platform. The partnership offers a shared goal of removing bottlenecks and allowing retailers to leverage technology as an enabler, giving way for reuse on future projects and phased developments, all while increasing return on investment and a faster time to market in a highly competitive industry.

Prolifics is committed to helping mutual customers quickly connect their apps and data to deliver digital projects and innovation faster, reaching out to both new and existing MuleSoft clients, with a series of events, content and targeted solutions.

MuleSoft is a registered trademark of MuleSoft, Inc., a Salesforce company. All other marks are those of respective owners.

Prolifics acquires Red Hat Premier Middleware Partner, Tier 2 Consulting Limited. 

London (United Kingdom), June 29, 2022 – Prolifics, a global digital transformation leader, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Tier 2 Consulting Limited. Incorporated and registered in England and Wales, Tier 2 delivers software solutions to its clients using modern, open-source, cloud-native technology, and an agile project approach. The Tier 2 team is composed of full-stack Java developers and Red Hat Middleware and OpenShift experts. Based on its skills and experience, Tier 2 was in fact the first Red Hat Premier Middleware Partner for the UK and Ireland.

For Prolifics, the acquisition is part of its ongoing expansion and growth goals. Tier 2 brings expert custom software development – using its agile approach with disciplined delivery – with a large and loyal UK customer base. Its Red Hat Premier Partner status, coupled with Prolifics already strong partnership with IBM, will expand opportunities across the board.

For Tier 2, becoming part of the Prolifics family will mean the ability to scale its existing custom software delivery capability to meet the increasing demands of its customers, offer expanded solutions and services in performance, volume, and penetration testing, in data and analytics, as well as provide enhanced career opportunities and job advancement for its people. Tier 2 will continue to operate as a separate entity under its current leadership structure.

Satya Bolli, Prolifics Chairman & Managing Director, said:

“We are thrilled to have Tier 2 as part of the Prolifics family. Their skill in software development and delivery and significant expertise in Red Hat Middleware and OpenShift will greatly increase our position and visibility in the high growth potential of the UK and North America cloud markets.”

Andrew Kennedy, Managing Director at Tier 2 Consulting, said:

“This acquisition marks a significant milestone in Tier 2’s 20-year history.  Building on our already proven track record of custom software design and development, it will provide Tier 2 with the basis for future expansion, to the benefit of our customers and our highly skilled team.  We share Prolifics’ ethos around quality solution delivery and technical expertise, and are delighted to have become part of the family.”

About Prolifics

Prolifics is a digital engineering and consulting firm helping clients navigate and accelerate their digital transformation journeys. We deliver relevant outcomes using our systematic approach to rapid, enterprise-grade continuous innovation. We treat our digital deliverables like a customized product – using agile practices to deliver immediate and ongoing increases in value. We provide consulting, engineering and managed services for all our practice areas – Data & AI, Integration & Applications, Business Automation, DevXOps, Test Automation, and Cybersecurity – at any point our clients need them.

About Tier 2 Consulting

Tier 2 works in partnership with our customers to understand their business challenges, and deliver custom software solutions using modern, open-source, cloud-native technology and an agile project approach.

We are full-stack Java developers, Red Hat Middleware and OpenShift experts, and became the first Red Hat Premier Middleware Partner for the UK & Ireland in 2014, an award based on proven skills and experience.  In 2021, we became one of the first Red Hat Container Platform Specialists in EMEA, an award which cements our position as the Red Hat partner of choice for delivery of cloud-native applications.

The beauty of our ultra-online, digital-first age is that for the first time ever, data really is everywhere. Everyone has the world at their fingertips it seems: a democratisation of information unlike any prior. Organisations of all sizes can tap into this wealth of information and use it to better their business—in theory.

In actuality, this flood of data has inundated many businesses. When trying to fish value from the wide sea of information, c-suite decision-makers find themselves quickly overwhelmed. Most companies will admit that their data collection and synthesis is a bit of a mess. The sheer abundance of data coming at a business from all angles has caused a data management crisis where meaning, context, and governance have not kept up.

While the full democratisation of information may be the goal, if your team can’t interpret what data is relevant, they can’t properly synthesise it and wield it to its full potential. It goes without saying that when each department has its own native data organisation process, they don’t always meld well into one corporate overview that’s vital for decision-making. Rather than optimising processes, this slows down the whole organisation—and may actually cost you revenue.

It would seem, then, that while democratisation is undoubtedly a plus, striking the right balance between a free-for-all and a managed stream is the feat of the hour. How can you find the balance? A balance that simplifies data for team members of all technical levels to use and maintains security, while also encouraging free and abundant access? A true democratisation of data?

What is Data Democratisation?

At the basest meaning of the term, data democratisation simply entails expanding data access to more people. No longer is data solely the purview of data scientists, now everyone in the organisation has a part to play. However, the exact extent to which unlimited access constitutes “democratisation” is up for some debate. As the concept evolves, different organisations interpret the term somewhat differently.

Consider a spectrum bridging the two concepts:

Total Control

Traditionally, data would flow through specific gatekeepers as part of a rigorously controlled data governance programme. This protects organisational data, but also makes it impractical for people to access the data they need, when they need it. An excessive limitation of information flow—in the name of due diligence—prevents relevant data from reaching its destination.

Total Freedom

On the other extreme, certain quarters advocate making information available directly to anyone within the organisation. However, this light touch data management exposes you to a higher risk of costly data breaches—and in some cases is not even legal, such as when handling financial information or other sensitive data. Not to mention that unfettered access to raw data is not particularly useful for less technically-attuned team members, and can just confuse more than it helps. While on its face a full democratisation of data, this simple opening of the floodgates often does more harm than good.

To truly democratise data in the workplace, you need to find a balance between these two extremes, satisfying the demand for more access while also maintaining appropriate controls. When you find your organisation’s unique formula, this equilibrium offers the best of both worlds. It’s neither unresponsive authoritarianism nor unruly anarchy, but a balanced and open exchange.

Why is Data Democratisation Essential to Your Business?

Effective data management can propel your business to new performance heights. The ability to access and interpret data in real-time results in speedier decision-making, which in turn creates more agile teams with an edge against slower, data-stingy competitors.

But, as discussed, it’s not just about giving more people access to raw data. Unrestricted access to unsynthesised information does nothing to help less-tech-savvy team members—and is risky. Some level of data processing is still essential in order to string together the whole story for users.

Consider, as an example, large banks, retailers, and online services, that share client information with thousands of employees. In a raw dump of data (the “full democratisation” some envision), these employees all suddenly have access to highly sensitive—and often irrelevant—information, which is also prone to leak.

A true democratisation effort on the other hand, would make this information available, but direct it where it needs to go: into the hands that can use it best. Rather than accessing snippets of unrelated, unprocessed information, seeing the whole picture at once can empower team members to better innovate and make informed decisions.

This organisation and strategic dissemination of data enable greater collaboration.

Data producers (and the people who wind up using that data) can seamlessly share information for the whole organisation’s benefit. Democratisation increases trust and transparency, making operations more productive. And as you continue adding data, the system becomes increasingly valuable.

Too many businesses struggle with delays, data silos, and archaic processes. Now is the time to modernise your legacy systems and streamline your information flows.

Getting Started With Data Democratisation

The first step in democratising your business’ data is to learn what functionalities are available and how they align with your needs. In order to know where you want to go, you first have to understand where you are.

Where Are You Now?

Analyse what data you collect, how you synthesise it, as well as what requirements you must adhere to and what drives your data collection efforts. Essentially, you want to determine which technical problems you need to solve and which business goals you can achieve.

What’s Your “Why”?

Identifying your drivers at the start will help you coordinate your efforts with your business goals as a North Star. Whatever the solution—be it strategic, financial, or operational pivots—having a clear sense of direction makes democratisation easier.

Where Are You Going?

Going back to that spectrum of “total control” to “total freedom,” upon appraisal, where do you find your business falls? Why? These questions give insight into your data culture. They also inform you how best to attain your democratisation objectives. What products or training do your people need? How will they use them?

This assessment stage is a great time to reach out for for a little outside professional help. Analysis can be quite a challenging process on your own. After all, it’s not just about the raw data. It’s also about understanding and cataloguing your assets, methods, and domains.

Prolifics can cast a fresh eye over your processes and help determine how you can best democratise your data.

How Will You Get There?

Once you develop a clear picture of where you’d like to go, it’s time to make a plan to get there. This plan will outline which specific modifications to make to your systems and processes.

Achieving true data democratisation means bringing together all your various raw data sources into a user-friendly whole. Thus, the quality of connectors for bringing in that data without corruption or loss is paramount to later use. Note that the data is dynamic: you want live data to keep your staff abreast of the latest information. The tools you use must accommodate this ever-changing nature.

Modern AI-powered analytics tools can process your data in detail to extract contextual details. Then you can incorporate the results through a user interface that enables people of any technical ability to understand and use—and trust—the data.

Too often people are deterred by the seemingly complicated nature of data democratisation, but it’s actually quite feasible. In fact, it’s not the complexity that organisations need to sort out, but rather the basics. Establishing the right foundation for data management—a foundation that tells you the who, what, where, when, and how of data access—will enable you to make clear, decisive steps forward.

Democratise Your Data with Prolifics

The technology and knowledge are available now to better prepare for the future of data management. As business intelligence tools increase in sophistication, organisations must grab this opportunity to put data where it belongs: front and centre, in the hands of workers who need it.

Data democratisation speeds up your workflows, clearing the path for information to support real-time decisions. While every business has its own optimal procedure, the best approach finds the happy medium between excessive restriction and an uncontrolled data deluge.

Of course, finding that happy medium can prove a challenge on your own. That’s why it helps to have a pro in your business’ corner. In comes Prolifics.

Prolifics comes to the table with decades of experience in helping companies manage data across industries, including finance, retail, and logistics. With us as your guide, you can efficiently proceed through the stages of data democratisation. From identifying your situation and needs to developing a plan and finally implementing a successful transition, we’ll make your democratisation process a breeze.

Are you ready to modernise your team’s data consumption and meet the digital era head-on? Let’s move your business into the future—democratise your data with Prolifics!

Data drives the business world. Accordingly, between customer relations and evolving trends, companies that fail to ensure the accuracy and veracity of their data only hold themselves back. The most recent statistics indicate a willingness among companies to spend extensively on data. Despite the 2020 setbacks brought on by Covid-19, the investments are only increasing. To truly leverage the coming years, IT and business leaders must plan wisely, with an eye toward emerging trends in data analytics, to maximise profits and productivity.

What should you be on the lookout for in 2022? Consider these five data analytics trends.

1. Master Data Management

Although this is a well-established area, master data remains the heart of your business. It’s the high-value information that provides critical insights into everything that makes your company tick: data on your customers, vendors, products, partners, staff, accounts, and more. Therefore, it stands to reason that any weak spots in your Master Data Management (MDM) strategy can have severe rippling impacts throughout your organisation. Strengthening your MDM approach is paramount to achieving your operational goals.

MDM encompasses a set of strategies used to manage an organisation’s master data. Before we discuss your strategy, however, it’s important to first establish a firm grasp on what your master data is, and how it may relate to other data sets.

Think of master data as your end-all-be-all pool of information—a golden record, if you will. There is only one record of this data and it should serve as the data your entire organisation leans on. For example, you should only have one set of data for any particular item your company sells regarding its specifications.

Whereas you should only have one set of master data, you may have several sets of “wrong” or “incorrect” data. “Wrong” data doesn’t necessarily imply factual error. It may contain the correct information, but be the wrong type for a given situation. Similarly, incorrect data is an inappropriate entry of the data you need. For example, you may have three different profiles for the same customer or employee. Wrong or incorrect data may lead to disagreements on which is correct, or how many people exist with the same name. Organisations can rectify these disagreements with a robust and clearly articulated MDM strategy.

2. Data Fabric

As companies source data from seemingly infinite sources, ensuring that data flows in one coherent stream is crucial to using and understanding it. Big data has boomed over the past decade as hybrid clouds, AI, Internet of Things (IoT), and edge computing entered the mainstream. Data Fabric aims to unify your data sources to curb challenges like data silos, security risks, and data bottlenecks.

There are more data sources available today than there were yesterday. The same will be true tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. A few of those sources may be in real-time; some might be structured, whereas others are unstructured. That data must be cleaned, verified, and handled before you can leverage it for analytics and machine learning.

Data Fabric essentially comprises the architecture of intelligent and automated systems that facilitate end-to-end integration of all those data pipelines. It fills the gaps between structured and unstructured data streams that otherwise would not “play well” together. You may think of Data Fabric as a blanket covering your messy data landscape. However, instead of taking an “out of sight, out of mind” approach, Data Fabric unifies the mess to drive decision-making. With more and more data sources popping up every day, it’s no wonder that forecasters expect the Data Fabric market to grow at a CAGR of 25.90% by 2027.

3. Process Mining

Among modern data analytics trends, one cannot overlook process mining. The practice is crucial to eradicating bad habits and patterns and running your organisation efficiently.

Process Mining assesses your organisation’s operational processes, extracting information from event logs, databases, information systems, and management software. With this information in hand, process mining then dissects which practises work and which need improvement. Organisations of all sizes—from fresh start-ups to international enterprises—can maximise efficiency by understanding how their processes work.

Think of process mining as a full audit of your operational processes. Are they running as efficiently as possible? Might there be areas to streamline that will increase productivity? Are you taking any unnecessary steps?

Process mining tells organisations what’s going on internally. Instead of just relying on assumptions, business leaders can make data-driven choices to expand their operations with increased productivity.

4. Operational Analytics (AnalyticsOps)

Operational Analytics (OA), also known as AnalyticsOps, leverages real-time data to support decision-making on the fly. These data analytics trends all seek to enhance your organisation’s decision-making process, and AnalyticsOps is no different. AnalyticsOps strengthens functionality by improving client experience, bolstering inventory management, and increasing overall productivity.

In short, AnalyticsOps is about turning insight into action, ASAP. What good is all that information if it just sits in a data warehouse and doesn’t promote action or change? Instead, put that data to work in the various tools that drive your business.

As a case study on leveraging AnalyticsOps, let’s examine how Wichita State University organised its student data to help at-risk students achieve their diplomas.

WSU, known as one of the first data-rich institutions, was an early adopter of AI technology. Software from IBM ran daily audits to strengthen predictive modelling and reporting capabilities. Their IT environment spanned more than 100 databases, an entire student information system, and protected research data.

By leveraging data analytics trends like AnalyticsOps, WSU better poised itself to identify students at risk of not graduating or struggling academically. With this data, WSU puts those students on a straightforward path to success—while saving considerable capital on their data management strategies.

5. Data Democratisation

Large corporations generate significant quantities of data every minute of every day—not to mention the avalanche of information coming at them from outside as well. Ideally, they’re leveraging all this information to grow and flourish. However, making informed choices can prove difficult when that data gets trapped in information silos. As a workaround, major enterprises turn to analytics trends like data democratisation, allowing for a free—but not wildly uncontrolled—flow of data throughout the company.

Data democratisation aims to make certain data accessible and functional for all employees and stakeholders within a company. This means more refined data capture, yes, but also educating team members on reading and using that data to make better decisions—regardless of their technical background.

To implement this sort of democratised system within your organisation, you need to first implement a modern data architecture that leverages business intelligence tools and platforms. At the same time, while you can invest in all the hi-tech tools in the world, you’ll still need to develop new habits and processes within the organisation. It takes time to change old habits, but data democratisation proves its worth in the end.

Refine Your Data Analytics Processes With Prolifics

Considering the pace at which information technology continues to develop these days—some even refer to this as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”—modern businesses must leverage data analytics trends to stay ahead (or even just to keep afloat). However, whether you run a small business or a large multinational enterprise, you’ve got a lot on your plate already. It’s hard to keep up with the latest and greatest, especially when the latest and greatest seem to change day-to-day.

That’s where Prolifics can step in to help. With over 40 years of experience transforming businesses of all sizes into competitive, data-driven enterprises, we at Prolifics keep our thumb on the pulse of technological change. By partnering with our data experts, you can keep ahead of the competition with best practices and the latest trends in data analytics.

Are you ready to elevate your data analytics processes to achieve full end to end visibility? Get in touch with Prolifics today to learn how data can increase your organisational productivity across the board.

As retail and supply chain companies join other sectors in going thoroughly digital, application programming interfaces (APIs) continue to take on increasing importance. More applications within and outside of each organisation need to be connected together—and APIs offer a proven way to do so.

Application programming interfaces simplify the development of safe and effective services. The API acts like a brain or a telecom network, connecting many systems together and delivering real-time information to customers, suppliers, and people throughout the company.

Integration via APIs helps bring legacy systems into the modern age, while also extracting maximum performance from your cloud-native applications. Considering how many retail and supply chain firms juggle a variety of old and new systems, they need an easy, speedy way to string them together. API integration is the answer!

The Rise of the API Economy Powers Digital Transformation Among Enterprises

APIs are gaining widespread use in part because of the strategic handiness of the “API economy” approach to uniting technical and business systems. Joined together by the central API, hundreds of applications can suddenly communicate with each other instantly. The connecting API itself becomes a valuable product.

For example, a shopping app can include a map, or a warehouse management system can connect to suppliers’ databases. Billing, accounting, customer relationship, and other software can all be connected through APIs. The result? Innovative companies engage the digital generation on customers’ turf—and reap greater profits.

API integration also makes your business more agile, as you can deliver multichannel services effortlessly. A customer can make purchases digitally or in person, with no difficulty to your system either way. All sales tie into the same network.

From a supply chain management perspective, an API-centric approach lets you add new sources (such as shipping out stock from a brick-and-mortar store), without complicating warehouse stock management numbers. This technique also makes you more resilient, as you can quickly switch transportation methods according to where stock is located or going. Sales and marketing become smarter.

Improving the Retail Experience With API Integration

API integration is good for business—and that goes for retail customers, as well as the business itself. Widespread integration makes the shopping journey more consistent across channels.

Instead of customers dealing with frustrating communication mismatches, an API can provide instant order statuses, personal vouchers, or any other information—by phone, web, kiosk, or anywhere. Or consider the classic conundrum of showing up to purchase something at the store, only to find out that it’s out of stock—even though the website says it’s available. The harmonisation of channels through an API alleviates this problem in real-time.

As yet another example, nowadays people often make purchases through shop recommendations. When retail systems communicate through an API, they not only reflect the same stock data but can also offer consistently personalised recommendations based on buying patterns. The retailer can upsell products related to previous purchases—and again, it doesn’t matter which venue the shopper uses.

Retailers can also use API integration to improve the shopping experience in more subtle ways, such as by giving customers more internal data. For instance, a bicycle shop may use an API to let people explore bike routes, equipment, and other company data. Third-party developers could then build their own apps on top of this API, further expanding the bike vendor’s marketing reach while solidifying partnerships.

APIs bring all your business’s individual systems together. This gives you immediate and complete information on stock numbers, order statuses, customer preferences, suppliers, shippers, and any other data you could want. The speed and granularity of integration are unprecedented, telling retailers in detail exactly who their customers are and enabling friendlier marketing practices.

APIs Connect People and Businesses With the Supply Chain

Application programming interfaces are about uniting the many aspects of your supply chain, from suppliers to logistics. Complex processes become more manageable as APIs facilitate automation, analytics, and other innovations, essentially building an “event-driven architecture” to support the rapid flow of business information. This architecture tracks and responds to actions (the “events”) from users and from the system. The approach pushes information through your organisation right away, rather than waiting for other systems to pull the information.

This results in more dynamic and responsive software than conventional business conventional architecture. As soon as customer information (like a sale) or any other data (like a new shipping option) enters the system, it produces real-time results anywhere you want.

Event-driven architectures make your supply chain capable of adapting to complex needs on the fly. Data-driven decisions become the norm, since your whole team has access to the most current information, even if they are widely distributed. You can combine point-of-sales systems, internal databases, supplier databases, cloud apps, mobile devices, warehouse inventory, and more into an efficient framework for making business decisions.

Your supply chain, in turn, evolves from the basic transportation of products into a smart network that imbues businesses with amazing responsiveness.

Power Up Your Business With Prolifics

APIs are so critical for digital transformation that they have become the highlight of industry-wide efforts. The API economy combines data sources and applications to give your employees real-time insights into any facet of the company. Using this information, your organisation can enhance customers’ retail experiences and earn more sales.

With API integration your retail store can sell on the web, on mobile apps, and in-store, all without any impact on inventory data or performance. The API ensures that the process runs smoothly regardless of shoppers’ preferred channel.

But APIs don’t just improve your retail experience; they also bolster your supply chain on the back end. From before production until after-sales, you’ll have extensive interconnections suffusing the organisation with vital intelligence. How many parts do you have? How long will it take to ship? Instead of guessing, you’ll know precisely the situation—and how to act.

Prolifics’ custom solutions can meet your exact needs for digital transformation. From assessing your organisation’s API readiness through to deploying and maintaining your installation, Prolifics has the experience to perform your API integration seamlessly. We partner with the top global IT vendors to build you a cutting-edge system.

Take your retail and supply chain operations to the next level with API integration. Contact Prolifics now!

As the fourth Industrial Revolution continues accelerating rapidly, businesses need to adopt strategies that set them up for whatever the future may hold. That includes adopting an API-first design approach.

A future-proof design enhances and connects multiple processes to deliver superior operational efficiency. With reusable software components that work to API standards, you can easily and quickly build secure products.

However, it’s not always easy to see these advantages with all the myths surrounding API-led development. You may have heard that APIs are new and untested technology or that a code-first approach is best, for instance. Other myths include a supposed lack of business value and an excess of complexity. However, the truth is that API-driven development actually outperforms code-first methods that are becoming outdated, thanks to its elegant modularity.

Composable business models can be assembled from pre-made parts. These modules comprise technologies including APIs, as well as business processes that can rapidly redeploy into new configurations suited to the times. This methodology helps make organisations more nimble and adaptable.

What Is API-First Design?

API-first design centres software development on application programming interfaces (APIs), instead of starting from the code itself. The API serves as the guiding force that shapes the rest of the development project. Since APIs define how different systems connect with each other, this approach outlines what a product can do before building the product.

API-led development speeds up innovation by streamlining and securing the development process from end to end. Programmes have a specific set of actions that they can perform, which makes it easy to write the appropriate code. Writing the API in advance gives you the concise basis for making graphical, voice, command line, or any other interfaces that may elaborate on the blueprint. This contrasts against conventional code-first development, which can get messy if started from ill-defined coding.

API-first design’s growing popularity is easy to explain: its speed, security, and simplicity greatly enhance a structured flow of information. Phones and other devices connecting to cloud apps have further helped the API economy bloom. As a result, businesses large and small are turning to this method to increase the efficiency and reliability of their offerings. API-first design lets businesses react nimbly in any situation, rolling out new goods and services to customers as soon as demand arises.

The API-led design also reduces the cost of developing components since these composable applications are reusable by nature. The blueprinting allows you to create applications that can perform the same work in multiple contexts. These work like building blocks that you can rapidly assemble into different products to satisfy evolving desires. You’re more agile—thanks to these reusable services.

Unfortunately, despite its many benefits and obvious superiority over a less-structured code-first approach, API-led design strategy suffers from a number of popular misconceptions and myths. Let’s clear the air about several of these longstanding misunderstandings.

Myth #1: APIs Are New

While API-driven development has exploded in recent years, the technology itself is not new. It has been around for over two decades and is a battle-tested solution that powers many of the online services we know and trust today.

The reuse potential for rapidly releasing new functionalities ranks among the main reasons for the present popularity of APIs. For example, consider the increasingly popular open banking system. The concept depends on public APIs, which allow financial service providers and their partners to respond more effectively to customers and regulatory requirements.

Governments are pressuring banks to allow outside organisations to check balances or conduct other transactions. Traditionally, banks closed off their systems for security purposes. However, modern APIs alleviate these concerns, offering a fast route from the bank to the public while maintaining security. Now instead of each bank or other institution having its own way of doing things, there are common techniques like JSON that unite many disparate organisations into a highly functional whole. The open-access nature of APIs gives these services a useful structure—making them both easier to build and more secure.

While API use itself is not novel, previously it might only have been added as an afterthought to link other tangential programmes. Today, companies start by creating the API, which then interfaces with any number of other systems. It’s the difference between tacking on an API to solve an existing problem versus designing the API from the start to respond to multiple unfolding problems. In short: APIs are not new—but over recent years they have blossomed into a centrepiece of the digital economy.

Myth #2: Code-First Is Always Better Than API-First Design

This myth seems to have arisen simply due to an “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” bias for historical solutions. Code-first is how things have been done in the past; now, however, API-first design often makes more sense. The application programming interface takes into account business needs according to key stakeholder input—not only technical capabilities—to steer development faster and farther.

In the context of building a reusable system, thinking about the API first is a must. You shouldn’t start developing before considering the requirements! Designing for reuse is designing for the future. Starting with the API fosters good design practices, making it easier to extract value from your resources down the road.

With the growth of the API economy, interconnectivity has become critical to business success. Companies like Expedia, Uber, and Stripe have built fortunes on APIs. And it’s not just large organisations—companies of any size that are reaping the benefits of API-first design. These software connectors unleash creative potential while supporting safe code.

API-first design’s superiority also rests its big-picture focus on delivering more concrete long-term ROI versus just starting to code. Instead of only fixing problem A, you’re also fixing problems B, C, D, and E.

Thus, code-first offers a false economy. It may seem easier to start coding straight away, but it doesn’t prepare you for the future. With API-first design, you assemble a clear notion of what each reusable component does ahead of time, which offers a powerful method to fix your business challenges.

Furthermore, by dint of their reusability, API-first designs can solve multiple problems across multiple systems. They open the door to unexpected applications later on—encouraging further innovation. While code-first may seem faster at first glance, its short-sightedness locks you into a constrained path from the start. Meanwhile, the API map only reveals greater horizons as you go.

Myth #3: API-First Approaches Have Low Business Value

While some may think that API-first development has low or no business value, it actually contributes substantially to enterprises’ bottom lines over time. An API-led approach is fundamentally attuned to an organisation’s operational needs from the get-go, by virtue of its design. Therefore, it’s planned with the business’ profit front of mind.

API-first development boosts innovation, adaptation, and agility—you’re essentially fortifying yourself for the future. As your business grows and evolves, unexpected challenges and opportunities will always crop up. A well-made API enables you to quickly pivot and capitalise on these moments rather than constructing off-the-cuff solutions from scratch on the fly.

Let’s take a look at what can happen if you don’t start with an adequate API. If anyone can come in and interact willy-nilly with the system, they can flood it with transactions, taking it down. This is not necessarily malicious, either—often, a flood of transactions is just a signal of positive, explosive growth! But a system needs to be secured for these unexpected moments if it is to run effectively and consistently.

For example, consider the eCommerce titan of titans, Amazon. Amazon Marketplace features APIs open for anyone to connect their shop and sell online. Their API-first design allows millions of products to be sold without overloading the system or otherwise threatening security. This gives third-party vendors access to an immense market, shoppers access to over a million vendors, and Amazon much larger profits.

Myth #4: API-Led Development Is Too Complex

Developers more accustomed to a code-first approach may wrongly assume that an API-first development cycle is more complex. However, these steps are actually quite simple and very adaptable to your needs.

With API-led development, you write apps to talk to a general API—not to specific devices, like an Android phone or a Windows computer. This straightforward approach frees you to reuse components as you please.

APIs streamline the process of innovating and developing for the future. It’s a different approach but not necessarily more complex. There’s some upfront commitment in compelling everyone in the organisation to pivot to develop with APIs and update legacy applications, certainly. But the long-term payoff comes with streamlined, easily reusable, and rearrangeable systems.

Having fewer interfaces makes innovation speedier, organisation-wide. You can roll out a new app in weeks, instead of months! All the building blocks are there—it’s just a matter of stringing them together through your carefully established API. Complexity doesn’t increase, it decreases. You have a single standard to which developers code, unifying efforts into an efficient process for delivering value to customers.

Streamline Development with Prolifics

API-first development simplifies the production of solid code. While application programming interfaces themselves are not new, they are experiencing a dramatic rise in popularity—indeed, technology as a whole has begun reconstituting itself around an API-driven economy. It’s time for your systems to catch up.

API-led development offers numerous compelling advantages over code-led development for technical staff—while also yielding faster and more functional products for customers. The resultant business value on both operational and consumer-facing ends makes this a doubly smart choice to modernise your enterprise.

The face of digital business is changing quickly—sometimes, it seems, too quickly for the average business to keep up. That’s why it helps to team up with a digital transformation partner with years of industry experience, like Prolifics, to make your transition to API-first development secure and speedy. No matter the project, the Prolifics team is here to help your business excel in its digital innovation goals, just as we have for businesses across the UK. Contact Prolifics today to see how we can ready your business for the future ahead.

As we move through the second half of the year, 2022 is on track to prove a difficult-yet-rewarding journey for retail. Customers now expect more convenience and speed than ever before, amid intense competition and uncertain times. It can be tough for a retailer to keep on top of IT. But retail innovation to connect with customers and streamline logistics is essential for retail vendors in the face of unprecedented challenges.

British vendors face a host of issues impacting the retail industry this year. Inflation has become a global problem in the wake of pandemic policies, and retail volume has dropped in response. The unending complications of Brexit and the Northern Ireland protocol add border issues that further interfere with imports and exports.

Looking abroad, the Russo-Ukrainian war shows no sign of concluding anytime soon, keeping the world on edge and throwing a wrench in major food supply chains. Meanwhile, China continues to enforce strict Covid-19 lockdowns, which severely affect international business hubs like Shanghai and disrupt international supply lines. Products are piling up in warehouses, cargo ships, and stores.

Adding to the woes is the difficulty retailers have finding employees, due to the so-called “Great Resignation”—the mass departure of people from work during the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly one in twenty Brits resigned last year alone! Pushed by economic forces including inflation as well as by personal motives, people no longer dance to the same old retail tune.

To confront these challenges, vendors need to rise to the occasion with new technology. Giving customers what they want, when they want it, and where they want it—even through the chaos—requires dynamic and intelligent systems. Companies should plan with an eye toward emerging trends like artificial intelligence, data-driven demand forecasting, integrated logistics management, and automation this year.

1. AI Innovation Paves the Way for More Personalised Retail Customer Experiences

After decades of research and innovation, artificial intelligence (AI) is now rapidly expanding to become a key part of retail (and the wider economy). AI provides vendors with sharper insights into shoppers’ desires and behaviours, allowing to retailers offer a more personalised customer experience.

For example, consider how companies like True Fit use AI to analyse shopper behaviours and make product recommendations for clothing retailers. The technology combs through customer information—including clothing sizes and demographic data—and then gives people purchase ideas to fit their preferences. Vendors can embed this functionality to increase sales and reduce returns.

Artificial intelligence also enables financial strategies like “buy now, pay later” and loans to empower shoppers at check-out. For instance, Klarna assesses shoppers’ creditworthiness through information technology before calculating the instalments they can pay. The financing assistance makes it easier to afford purchases. AI can better identify opportunities like this that would have gone unnoticed, opening new revenue streams.

Many online retailers now use chatbots to deliver information more cost-effectively and securely than before. AI also recommends personalised products in online shopping carts to decrease abandonment. And throughout this entire sales process, AI also works to detect and prevent fraud, using behaviour and pattern tracking to identify suspicious activity. And as technology advances further, AI’s potential in retail will only continue to expand.

2. Data-Driven Demand Planning

Retailers face the harrowing task of planning in a highly unpredictable world. Data is key for making any forecasts—a data-driven plan is simply more accurate, encouraging balanced supply chain management and tighter customer relationship management.

But demand planning is tricky enough in a stable environment; in a crisis, it becomes even more of a challenge. Fortunately, advanced technological solutions now coming to the market allow retailers to take advantage of hidden opportunities. The tools and solutions for data-backed analysis have advanced tremendously; new techniques can help drive sourcing and procurement in even the most uncertain times.

Businesses can use sales data—including indicators for seasonality, current events, and more—to make better predictions and stay ahead of the competition. For example, analytics can tell retailers when and where to send more stock. Various signals can suggest proactive choices to put products in shoppers’ hands, instead of leaving people disappointed. You can also coordinate more nuanced and extensive marketing programmes with your data-driven demand planning.

With more data available now than ever before, digging through the numbers to extract useful insights can be a complex and time-consuming process. You need fast and precise plans to keep up with the pace of modern business. The more efficiently you can extract value from your collected data, the better situated you are to conquer the retail market—and new analytics innovation can help.

3. Seamless Logistics Management Through Integrated Systems

Retail success depends on logistics. Interconnections among your disparate systems bring together retail processes to improve delivery, ensuring that products move efficiently. But in order to maximise efficiency, you need to integrate these internal and external systems as much as possible—and Prolifics can help.

Integration enables multiple complementary fulfilment channels: you can sell from warehouses, stores, online, and directly from suppliers all just as efficiently. This extends your product and customer range, without sacrificing speed. For instance, with highly-integrated logistics, you can sell popular clothing sizes from your warehouse and backfill uncommon sizes from suppliers, without running up storage costs or slowing down the customer.

Integration also shortens customer delivery lead times and reduces returns, since you operate multiple routes simultaneously through a standardised process. It’s like upgrading from scattered country roads to the national highway system.

Logistics management starts with getting your data in order. For example, you can use a solution like IBM Cognos, which incorporates Watson artificial intelligence, to simplify and join your input data to produce informative visualisations and forecasts.

Building on your ordered data is an integration platform, such as IBM Cloud Pak, which bridges on-premises and cloud infrastructure. From there you can share data with business partners and third-party aggregators as necessary. Data goes from multiple sources to wherever it does the most good.

As an example of how integration can help, consider how the UK’s go-to retail logistics provider Clipper integrated its systems with Prolifics. Modernising systems and implementing new tech innovation sped up onboarding substantially. Internal and external systems now work hand-in-hand, allowing Clipper and the retail partners they serve to scale and expand services.

4. Address Supply Chain Issues With Automation

When it comes to the supply chain issues wrought by the 2020 shutdowns, nowhere around the world went untouched. Even two years later, businesses are still struggling to get back on their feet. Given the magnitude of the disruption, however, it’s also opened up a golden opportunity for retail vendors to invest heavily in automation innovation. No longer just the domain of big business, now small and medium enterprises are also automating processes. There are tools fit for the specific jobs you need, ready to act as your workforce multipliers.

When it comes to automating your supply chain, look for tools that can speed up rote tasks you might have previously handled manually. For example, when processing returns and refund requests for approval, handling each case by hand takes considerable time—and time is money. Automating this process cuts out unnecessary costs while assisting more customers. You can also scale this service depending on business fluctuation, to optimise your expenditures.

The same advantages apply to processes before the purchase is made, too. Chatbots can automate order checking and other mundane-yet-costly tasks. Retailers are also automating customer engagement strategies (think personalisation emails and social media encounters) to increase sales.

As you accumulate data from business operations, you’re developing a valuable repository of data—that often goes unrecognised by businesses. Use automation tools to mine this data and improve business processes. The ensuing gains in efficiency may yield substantial long-term cost savings.

Workflow and document automation involves changing long-running tasks like data capture and distribution and moving away from legacy systems. Newer event-driven processes react to information as soon as received, thereby bolstering automation. When a purchase order comes in, it triggers responses on the basis of data such as the purchaser and the category of item. This enables the system to send the order to the right department all on its own.

In the next few years, over three-quarters of supply chain application vendors will include advanced analytics, AI, and techniques like machine learning.

Now is the time to upgrade to automation—before your competition catches up.

Go Digital With Prolifics

Digital retail innovation is critical to survival in the retail industry. Companies need to keep pace with technology trends—from the supply chain through to the customer experience—to optimise performance. Partnering with a proven digital transformation leader like Prolifics gives retailers of any size or technical experience an edge.

Whether you want to adopt the API-first approach to integrating systems or modernise with AI, it makes sense to collaborate with digital transformation professionals. Prolifics has helped businesses across the UK make the digital jump—and yours could be next! Our decades of experience are at your disposal.

Are you ready to leap into the digital future? Reach out and see how Prolifics can make your retail operations smarter, faster, and more profitable today.

Data is becoming increasingly important and, as such, it remains imperative that this valuable resource is securely stored in one place. When data is siloed or fragmented, it can lead to disorder and this can cause a company to lose its edge. Opting to go with a more cohesive and integrated model allows companies to retain their edge in competitive environments.

In this way, companies better equip themselves to answer specific and often unpredictable questions. A robust business intelligence platform allows you to track critical metrics and high-level status updates across the company. Business intelligence (BI) converts your company into a data-driven machine, nurturing the quick decision-making necessary to meet your business goals.

The future is data-driven—data from Reuters predicts the BI market will reach £28.53 billion in 2022. With so many BI solutions on the market, figuring out which is best for your business can prove a daily struggle. What daily challenges does your business face? And how might a robust business intelligence platform help resolve them?

Common Business Intelligence Challenges That Every Organisation Faces

Research indicated that reports, dashboards, ad-hoc queries, visualization/discovery, and planning/what-if scenarios are the most critical types of analytics to consider.

Mid- to large-sized organisations with multiple departments face several challenges regarding potential BI solutions. Each department may leverage its own BI software, but the organisation as a whole remains disjointed. Companies may struggle to convert these data insights into actionable strategies without a centralised BI solution, such as those provided by the likes of IBM Cognos.

Don’t let fragmented puzzle pieces prevent you from attaining your business goals. Instead, bring those pieces together to see the full picture. Let’s explore some of the most common BI challenges business leaders face today.

Data Integration

As companies pull data from various sources, they’ll need a way to combine all that data for analysis. Most companies leverage a data warehouse to store information from their cloud or in-house systems. However, companies can be more agile by pivoting toward BI tools for data integration, effectively bypassing the data warehouse.

Of course, the best BI solutions don’t come without technical trade-offs. Some competitor systems may hinder your ability to refresh data reports on the fly. While trying to pull data from a client’s data warehouse, one consulting firm was forced to write its own Java application to harmonise all the files. Companies can’t afford to take these unnecessary steps in today’s fast-paced world.

Data Quality

Inaccurate data is useless to your company. Furthermore, errors that make it past filters can severely damage your brand and company image. It’s borderline impossible to overcome human error when processing mass quantities of data. With BI solutions like IBM Cognos, companies can ensure the accuracy of their data, while combing out errors and duplicates and identifying missing data streams.

Data Silos

There are probably several data silos scattered across your company, collecting data from their specific departments and concentrating them in one place. However, those silos often come with their own permission levels and security settings. In turn, your current BI solutions struggle to access the data you need. To truly leverage the capabilities of a robust business intelligence platform, companies must pivot away from silos and towards data harmonisation.

Inconsistent data silos are like playing telephone—you may end up with several different versions of the truth, including conflicting KPI results, among other business metrics. Keep everything streamlined with an all-encompassing business intelligence platform.

Key Benefits of Utilising Enterprise Analytics Platforms

If you think of your existing data systems as puzzle pieces, BI analytics platforms essentially put the puzzle together, creating a fuller image. Instead of making decisions based on one department’s data—one fragment of the puzzle—you can make agile choices backed by the big picture.

How will leveraging a business intelligence platform like IBM Cognos improve existing data systems?

Company-Wide Trust & Consistency

Centralised data keeps your teams on the same page, thus providing consistent and quality-controlled service to clients and customers. Meanwhile, centralisation makes your current systems more transparent and easier to understand.

Consistency also creates a sense of trust throughout the company—trust that the data team members are using is accurate and actionable. One of the best ways to build data trust is by making it available to everyone, thus creating a consistent, centralised source of truth.

Centralised, trustworthy data also helps foster a sense of company culture and unity. By limiting access to valuable data—for example, only allowing your sales team to access sales analytics—you effectively bar other departments from leveraging helpful reports. On the other hand, company-wide access enables teams to be better prepared during collaboration. Instead of spending time catching everyone up on the latest figures, you can dive right into the heart of the project, knowing everyone is on the same page.

Breaking Down Data Silos

The more data your company can leverage, the better equipped you are to progress into the future. Data silos inhibit that progress by hampering the free flow of information throughout the company. A proliferation of data points creates unnecessary hurdles when different departments come together on a common task. Confusion about whose data is “accurate” hinders advancement.

By centralising your data with a cohesive business intelligence platform, you can clearly define “truth” regarding your different data streams. Your departments can easily cite centralised data without conflicting numbers, statistics, or projections, thus eliminating confusion.

Eliminate Bad Data

Bad data is costly. In fact, according to one Gartner survey, bad data results in average costs of £11 million per year! Further research from LeadJen Group found that this bad data can cost companies upwards of £15,964 per year per sales rep.

Bad data is like a disease—it festers as multiple users interact with it across data sources. One wrong input creates a string of inaccurate data points, like a virus slowly growing behind the scenes.

Leverage a centralised business intelligence platform to protect you from the pitfalls of insufficient data and ensure data hygiene. Since you’re only working off one source, it’s more manageable to clean and maintain.

The success of this approach is evident in the following case study:

Novolex, a packaging and food service products manufacturer, assessed a disconnect between their sales and production plans during the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the company, limited data meant they were struggling to ascertain where sites were producing enough volume and how to avoid over-producing.

Using a combination of IBM Planning Analytics and Business Intelligence capabilities they turned this situation around completely. The data speaks for itself as now the company has managed to reduce forecasting by five weeks and is now operating with 16% less inventory—a remarkable achievement.

Important Features to Consider in a Business Intelligence Platform

Centralising your data with BI solutions can propel your company into the data-fuelled future. However, the most robust business intelligence platform—one like IBM Cognos—comes equipped with several key features that separate it from the rest of the competition even more. What should you look for in a BI solution?

Effortless Connectivity

A robust business intelligence platform must support all kinds of data sources, including relational, OLAP, and XML. Furthermore, BI solutions must be able to connect to Cloud and on-premise data sources, such as SQL databases, Google BigQuery, Amazon, and more.

Integration and Packaging

Companies today are often forced to incorporate various business and analytics tools together to meet their insight needs—which may prove inefficient and time-consuming. A business platform that’s adaptable to all decision-making departments should allow for deep insights to be packaged in customised ways.

IBM Cognos even takes this a step further with a new feature released as of June 2022: their Content Analytics Hub. Using a single dashboard, data-based insights are able to be aggregated from Google, Microsoft, ThoughtSpot and more. This enables businesses to pull data out of siloes and personalise virtually all of their information in one place. Its modern capabilities even allow for details like customised branding and simple delivery options.

AI-Powered Data Prep

A BI system can save valuable time by cleaning your data with AI-assisted data preparation. In this way, you can source and clean data from multiple streams, join related data, and create new tables. Uncovering related tables is easier than ever before with IBM Cognos analytics.

Fast, Dynamic, and Responsive Dashboards

The best BI systems should work for their companies—with the least amount of effort possible. IBM Cognos lets users create quick and easy interactive dashboards. You can drag and drop data to build auto-generated visualisations that can be easily shared via Slack or email. With the click of a button, you can easily enable IBM Cognos’ enhanced AI-driven forecasting.

Empowerment to Make Confident, Data-Backed Decisions

You won’t need a data science background to leverage the power of IBM Cognos. The BI software allows you to dig deeper into hidden analytics insights, detailed in plain, digestible language.

Compared to primary competitors, Cognos Analytics provides you with more of what you need, ensuring effective scaling without needing to purchase premium licences. IBM Cognos also encompasses complete governance protocols, native forecasting, and enhanced connectivity between cloud and on-premises systems.

Cognos Analytics provides users with several enterprise add-ons, on-premises support, and streamlined migration. Cognos will also help you leverage your data to its fullest potential, allowing the complete monetisation of that data through APIs.

IBM Cognos in Action

Actions speak louder than words—so let’s look at some specific use-cases for IBM Cognos Analytics.

ECCO Ireland Leverages Sales Analytics

Fashion—especially footwear—is a highly-competitive, fast-moving industry. ECCO Ireland wanted to ensure that all its retail stores were stocked with the latest trends in men’s and women’s fashion. To do so, they leveraged IBM’s business intelligence platform to stay up-to-date with the best-selling products and measure sales performances across their stores.

ECCO Ireland eliminated the manual effort required to create detailed sales reports while supporting health competition between their stores by consolidating all their data under one platform. IBM’s centralised data solution also allowed ECCO to respond quickly to changing market conditions.

An Insurance Company Centralises Data

One Company, which provides workplace insurance in the US, went through a multi-company merger, resulting in multiple data warehouses from 30+-year-old legacy systems.

Employees reported spending 70% of the time combing for the correct data, and operational costs skyrocketed. The entire data strategy was wholly inefficient. These pitfalls then further lead to poor customer service and inconsistent billing, among other challenges.

By leveraging IBM Cognos Analytics—among other IBM services—the Company now benefits from a top-notch, centralised data infrastructure built to serve its customers. Transparent and rounded views of master customer information-enabled better data management and more informed decision-making.

Automating their business processes allowed the Company to solve arising data issues quickly and effectively. Simultaneously, automation provided deeper insight into their customers, increasing growth opportunities through improved sales potential.

Essential Strategies in Centralised Business Insights

Packaging and integration is a great way for companies to enjoy increased flexibility when tackling various types of analytics. As technology improves rapidly, people are bombarded by updated and new solutions on a daily basis. For this reason, a company may find itself with multiple analytics tools to service a variety of data needs. While each of these may provide an adequate solution to specific data needs, working across platforms can often lead to a disjointed overall approach instead of a streamlined one. Insights can become siloed from other capabilities leading to frustrations when trying to access information.

By opting to go with a solution that gives deeper integration across analytics tools, companies will have more control and flexibility across different analytics. To address these challenges, IBM Cognos has been designed to achieve just this. In addition to this, solutions that offer an analytics hub afford users the opportunity to access, customise and personalise content according to their needs, thereby ensuring productivity. Hubs like these usually allow branding and creative flexibility.

Other features of this platform include:

• Multi-cloud data access
• Intelligent knowledge catalog
• Pervasive data privacy and security
• Distributed processing

Centralise Your BI Systems With Prolifics

Mid- and large-sized companies have more data streams than they’re probably aware of. However, that data is the key to company success, thus exemplifying the importance of a robust business intelligence platform.

The data insights gained from a centralised BI platform can give companies a competitive edge in a fast-paced business world. But understanding which is best for your business creates another set of challenges. Thankfully, you can turn to a reliable IT partner like Prolifics to help you move away from siloed and fragmented data to adopt the right enterprise business intelligence solutions for you.

The Prolifics team has decades of experience helping companies in finance, retail, logistics, and more to manage and optimise data. We work with you out of the gate to analyse your current BI state and identify innovative opportunities—all the way through to the successful implementation of your plan.

Contact Prolifcs today to learn how adopting a business intelligence software like IBM Cognos can unlock untapped potential in your current business analytics systems.

A grand digital transformation has swept through the economy, fundamentally remaking experiences for customers and employees. As retail stores went online in droves at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, they had to find new ways to connect systems and scale up delivery networks.

To meet shopper demand for online purchases, businesses scaled up fulfilment operations for warehousing and shipping. Mobile apps and brick-and-mortar stores now also share the same backend. Powered by application programming interfaces (APIs), this new digital economy makes a drastic break from the old world of sales.

But it’s not just retail; it truly is an economy-wide API shift. No matter your industry, you must keep up with the times and make the digital jump to stay competitive as the API economy continues to flourish.

What Exactly Is the API Economy?

An API economy is, in simplest terms, an interconnected web of multiple business services through application programming interfaces. This network lets companies collaborate more instantaneously and efficiently than ever before.

It’s referred to as an “economy” because it functionally serves as an entire business world, where companies use APIs to communicate. Clearly established communication standards make it straightforward to join business components between companies, even as new features become available.

An API strategy maximises the value of your company’s data. Taking an API-first development approach—starting from the interconnections that your business services will need, rather than with code, as in traditional development practices—lets you break complex problems into simple, reliable, reusable components to be composited however businesses want.

APIs let you offer digital services and data that previously were not easily accessible. For example, a weather forecasting company can sell access to weather data through an API, which an online retailer may buy to adjust which products they suggest, on the basis of trends. Many unanticipated combinations will continue to arise as the API economy grows and people connect new apps.

Why Is It Important?

The API economy offers several key advantages that are winning over an increasing number of companies. APIs encourage innovation and speed up connections among different businesses and processes compared to legacy programs.

Just a few years ago APIs were a backwater and rarely mentioned outside of technical IT circles, yet now these interfaces see billions of dollars in investment every year. APIs make it easier to assemble profitable systems increasing flexibility and speed many times over. In fact, according to the 2020–2021 RapidAPI Developer Survey Report, nearly half of large companies now use 250 or more APIs.

This burgeoning business world offers a new and exciting profit avenue, enabling a second wave of retailers to take to the rapidly growing digital channels such as web and mobile. The API economy advances businesses from only dealing in products and services to offering platforms with larger revenue potential.

As an ecosystem develops around the company, the same core assets reach more customers. Consider these success stories:

• Revolutionary ride-share giant Uber has gone beyond the realm of being just another taxi company by using map and payment APIs to add value to partner businesses.
• Tech leader IBM has given cognitive computing to the public through its Watson API, which now powers a range of applications.
• Amazon has collaborated with several household names that also rely on APIs.

No longer just a connecting tool for a few niche categories, the API has grown into a dominant approach to growing one’s sales via digital channels. It can spark new partnerships with suppliers that were previously at arm’s length.

How Can the API Economy Benefit Your Business?

As APIs connect more and more processes, they offer an important competitive advantage not only for IT companies but for all growing businesses. APIs make your business more agile, and allow you to easily add new services as you grow. Now you can quickly hook new data from any supplier into your processes.

The API economy offers an unparalleled symbiosis. You can work hand-in-hand with other companies to build economies of scale. For instance, if one company sells data through an API that another company uses to build a new service, both businesses—and their joint customer base—benefit.

Third parties can quickly expand available services in the API economy to keep up with industry trends and consumer demands. This results in more customer satisfaction instead of frustration regarding unavailable services.

Standardised tools are on hand to build whatever the market demands. Businesses of any size or segment can take advantage of the API economy by combining readily available features, even if they lack technical expertise.

Leveraging the API economy opens the door to innovation that simply couldn’t occur otherwise. You can assemble your own unique business building blocks to turn new ideas into reality. APIs serve as the studs connecting the blocks, enabling the construction of complex, sprawling, profitable enterprises.

Getting Started With Your Enterprise API Strategy

Before diving into the API economy, you want to clearly establish your strategy. This will direct your efforts to ensure a successful transition, and set you up for future build-out. Here are some questions your company should consider when developing your API strategy:

• What are your overarching company goals?
• What is the current state of your data assets?
• Do you consider your data and technology to be core business products or assets?
• What do you want to accomplish and who will be your target audience from the get-go?
• What functionality and security measures will you need?
• How can APIs leverage your data estate towards your goals?
• How will your products and services benefit from being API-enabled?

As with many other endeavours, transition into the API economy gradually. Having big plans in mind, start with simple steps. This produces faster returns while reducing your investments and risks—the process can be complex enough anyway!

Some of the steps that your team can expect to take include:

• Calculating your expected business benefits.
• Familiarising decision-makers with knowledge of which technologies or features will maximise returns on investment (before making any platform decision).
• Educating personnel and prospective customers about the changes.
• Unpicking and analysing the old and new systems, answering practical implementation questions as you go (such as understanding the data locked in current systems or API management platform to use).
• Assessing whether you have data of the right quality to successfully enable your APIs.
• Testing your systems thoroughly to prevent errors from interfering with users’ experiences.

Given the complexity of these assessments, most companies cannot develop an effective enterprise API strategy on their own. Rather, you should engage a partner who truly understands APIs. A partner like Prolifics brings the experience and know-how to streamline the digital transformation process and avoid costly mistakes. Prolifics offers a workshop-based API strategy assessment to assist your organisation.

Join the API Economy With Prolifics

The API economy is no longer the future, it’s the present—for those who embrace it. Companies that want to stay competitive as they journey through the so-called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’—the tech revolution—should adopt an API-first mindset ASAP. However, it’s not practical for companies to transition on their own without the help of proven IT experts.

In comes Prolifics. As a leading UK-based digital engineering consultancy with expertise in all aspects of digital transformation, including APIs, middleware and integration. Our consultative, end-to-end approach goes from planning to building and maintaining solutions.

Going API-first is crucial to digital transformation. It’s a complete overhaul of managing data. To join the ecosystem, you need to act as a contributing member—and the way to do so is to modernise your backend in a thorough API-first reconstruction.

Reap the rewards of connecting to the API economy. Your organisation will become more nimble and collaborative, delivering next-generation customer services, only achievable through strategic and methodical digital transformation. Talk with Prolifics about your API strategy today!

As digital transformation spreads through the industry, intelligent processes give businesses leverage to achieve far more efficient performance. With the growing importance of remote work and becoming leaner, automation unlocks evermore revenue for companies embracing it.

Automation is essentially a force multiplier—it lets you do more with less. Automating a process lets it run on its own (faster and at a lower cost) instead of having a human do the same task.

IBM reports that three-quarters of executives expect to grow their revenue through automation. Increasingly they count on automation for all levels of work, not just simple administrative tasks. Indeed, according to the data, some of the most common approaches to automation are workflow management and robotic process automation (82% of organisations), machine learning (65%), and neural net “deep intelligence” (49%).

It’s not just a matter of saving time and money; there are many compelling reasons to automate. In addition to the raw efficiency gain, automation delivers composability: you can mix and match features to build new services faster, giving you reusable components that support innovation.

The technologies have changed over the years, but the fundamental idea of improving operations through efficient programmes hasn’t. Among the trends discussed in a recent MuleSoft report, business automation is emerging as a vital trend in everyday operations. Automation makes business faster and acts as a leveller, allowing you to outcompete other companies—even if they’re larger. Instead of ‘throwing more bodies’ at an intractable problem, automate it instead!

1. Better Business Automation: Do More With Less

In a challenging economy, when it’s difficult to find enough skilled labour, efficiency counts. This drives the pivot from piecemeal automation to a more embedded, holistic incorporation.

Automation optimally positions you to tackle nearly any business hurdle because you can redirect the allocation of effort in your business. By relegating repetitive tasks to automated tools, you free up human labour for more involved tasks that require specialised skills, thus accelerating both automated and manual workstreams. Artificial intelligence powers automation to the tune of $134 billion in labour value this year alone, signalling a growing market.

Process mining—replacing manual techniques with a more efficient and objective data-driven approach—can help nearly any industry find and fix costly problems. For example, you can employ automated solutions to deal with repeatable aspects of the HR process, like processing documents or conducting verification while onboarding.

Businesses are looking to streamline their automation efforts further. As much as 64% of professionals plan to build automation that improves workplace experience over the next two years.

As a more unconventional example, consider how Prolifics and IBM are using automation to help uphold the US Constitution, streamlining judicial system processes to enable all criminal defendants to receive access to free public defence.

Automation drastically cuts wait times, from over a month and a half to just over a week. With well over 100,000 claims per year, efficiency matters every step of the way.

While the surge of interest is sudden, modern automation continues a long-term trend. The industrial revolution involved automating many mechanical tasks that, until then, people did manually. Now we have the automation of digital-age tasks through low-code and no-code tools, robotic process automation, and other relevant technologies. A natural progression.

2. Composability Drives Innovation and Agility

There’s strength in numbers, so it often makes sense to use different resources together. This applies to software as well—where the concept is known as composability. You can combine or “compose” multiple pieces of functionality into an adaptable array of bespoke software solutions.

Even the largest projects can be tackled with a modular approach of breaking them down into manageable pieces. There are too many interfaces and functionalities for a single monolithic structure to address all situations. It’s sometimes more effective to work with small pieces that fit together.

With as many as 74% of companies accelerating their plans to move to the cloud by more than a year, companies are more likely to leave legacy technologies to simplify how they operate.

Companies using automation thus become more agile. In a highly-volatile business environment, this agility positions you to capitalise on sudden opportunities as they crop up—a quick composition of the right modules, and you have a purpose-built system to derive value.

But it’s not just about positioning for the future—it’s also about surviving the present. Considering the frequent innovations now occurring in the cloud, businesses need to stay agile and be ready to change on a dime. This idea of composability will also bleed out from just automation, eventually influencing your entire business architecture for the better.

3. Low- And No-Code Automation Will Accelerate Your Processes

No-code, as the term implies, refers to technologies that do not require any coding knowledge to automate. Low-code platforms, such as Cloud Pak for Automation, are similar but use a minimal amount of code. Both of these approaches simplify automation and make it accessible to more employees.

By spreading automation to a larger pool of staff, you can cover a lot more ground. This manoeuvre addresses the shortages of IT workers and the pressure to automate as soon as possible.

Because nearly anyone can use low-code tools, there’s no need for expensive niche coding skills to develop a small app. Experienced coders can focus their efforts on the more complex areas while people throughout the organisation ramp up productivity otherwise.

Prolifics works with established low-code platform vendors and can help you expedite development. For example, consider how one healthcare company saved 30% of automation time with a low-code solution by Prolifics.

They needed to test a system programmatically, yet lacked coding experience. Using a low-code tool, Prolifics helped the healthcare company handle the testing substantially faster than before and with less expense.

In 2023 it will become more common for non-technical people to contribute to technical processes; no- and low-code automation makes it simple for them—and yourself.

4. Automation Leads to Data-Driven Business Intelligence

Businesses need to answer pressing questions to thrive. What do customers want? Where do you invest? The data-driven way to deal with these issues is to analyse the available information using the best possible tools.

Tying in with composability, more interconnected data arrangements result in more actionable insights—and fewer failures to identify and exploit business opportunities.

Businesses have to deal with more and more data each year; we’re now at the stage where manual methods simply cannot manage the large amounts of data flowing through an organisation. This is where automation comes in: to tame the flood.

Automation processes data faster and cheaper than a human can, so it’s a key tool in enhancing business intelligence. Thus, many companies are applying automation tools to enhance their decision intelligence.

Automated reports help democratise your data. By giving more people access to more actionable data, you supply all departments with up-to-the-minute BI to base decisions on. Automation can also improve the quality of your data, the integration of data from multiple different systems, and the initiation of rule-consistent, logical actions.

Get Started With Business Automation—Don’t Get Left Behind!

Automation is already finding its way into leading-edge companies and growing in popularity daily. Soon it will become a necessity. Taking the right steps now will set your organisation up for success in the future.

To start your business on its business automation journey, it’s useful first to identify which tasks that take the most employee time. See if these tasks have repetition that can be better handled by technology—automating these will let workers focus on higher-value activities instead.

You can also look for tasks where automation may supplement, rather than fulfil, the duties. Then human workers will have technological assistance to make better choices.

Once you know what tasks to automate, it’s just a matter of setting the plan in action. Working with the business automation experts at Prolifics can simplify the process. With over 40 years’ experience in business automation—starting in 1978, with app development for Wall Street firms—the Prolifics team comes with the know-how to optimise your operations and ensure an easy transition.

From end-to-end implementation, we’ve got you—we’ll help identify which processes can benefit most from making the jump and help ensure they’re maintained, optimised, and managed long after. After a short discovery call with the team to figure out your business needs, you’re welcome to attend a free workshop that leads to a high-ROI quick-start pilot.

Start Your Business Automation Journey With Prolifics

Automating business processes has twofold benefits: it speeds up processes while also cutting the cost of business. It also boosts innovation by producing modular building blocks and widens employee accessibility with no- and low-code solutions.

The time to automate is now. Make your processes work for you and springboard into the digital future (and present) of business. Set up a discovery call with our team today to discover where you can streamline your business.