Multi-channel engagement

Nowadays, retailers are competing to attract new customers or maximize share-of-wallet of existing customers. To stay competitive, they need to quickly adapt to the changing market landscape and provide multi-channel engagement across web, mobile, social and traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Coupled with mobile Apps and Social Media, Artificial Intelligence is changing the way customers interact with businesses. Instead of a customer services team, chatbot is handling millions of queries and thus making the system more efficient.

API-led connectivity is a systematic way to use APIs, designed for specific purposes, to expose data and services onto a platform for broader consumption by the business. With this approach, rather than connecting data sources and systems with point-to-point integration, every asset becomes a modern, managed API.

There are three types of API used in an API-led connectivity:

System APIs – this type of API accesses the core systems of record and insulates the user from the complexity or any changes to the underlying systems. Once built, many users can access information without any need to learn the underlying systems and can reuse these APIs in multiple projects.

Process APIs – These APIs interact with and shape data within a single system or across systems (breaking down data silos) and are created here without a dependence on the source systems from which that data originates, as well as the target channels through which that data is delivered.

Experience APIs – Experience APIs are the means by which information can be reconfigured so that it is most easily consumed by its audience, all from a common data source, rather than setting up separate point-to-point integrations for each channel. An Experience API is typically created with API-first design principles where the API is designed for the specific user experience in mind.