49% Respondents Believe APIs Can Improve CX: Report

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APIs continue to grow in importance not only with software developers but also with the leading enterprise organisations they support, as companies increasingly rely on APIs to accelerate their digital transformation efforts.

To shed light on the trends that businesses encounter as they rely more heavily on APIs, RapidAPI released a new report: The State of Enterprise APIs – Understanding API Uses, Challenges and Strategies. 

Conducted by Vanson Bourne, the survey of 300 global IT leaders examines the current API landscape, highlighting adoption and usage trends, as well as the challenges most organisations encounter as they struggle to manage the APIs that are driving innovation and collaboration throughout the organisation.

The survey found that nearly all respondents (98 per cent) believe that APIs are an essential part of their organisation’s digital transformation, and 97 per cent agree that successfully executing an API strategy is essential to secure organisations’ future revenue and growth. However, as organisations realise the importance of an API strategy, most (95 per cent) are experiencing challenges along with their increased API usage.

“While many companies are funding digital transformational programs with APIs at the core of their strategy, they struggle to use APIs effectively,” said Iddo Gino, CEO and Founder, RapidAPI. “The data shows what we’ve heard consistently from our customers – that their existing set of API tooling isn’t built for the scale and breadth of APIs that companies are currently building. To accommodate this growth, many have engaged with RapidAPI to help them establish a more centralised hub where developers can collaborate on work on APIs.”

Complex API Tooling, Security and Governance, and Lack of Collaboration Among Top Challenges

As companies execute their API strategies and adapt to the rapid evolution seen within the API landscape, they’re also faced with new challenges. The five biggest challenges organisations face regarding APIs include:

• API management and tooling: existing tools are too complex and require too many resources to support
• Security and governance: there is a lack of visibility across all APIs and consistent policy enforcement
• Access control: inability to provide the right access to right individuals
• Vendor lock-in: many solutions are “closed systems” that don’t integrate well with other solutions
• Collaboration: most organisations lack the right tools for users and teams to share effectively

Many organisations either have an API program/strategy in place (34 per cent) or are in the process of building one (64 per cent), underscoring its significance to the majority of enterprise API leaders. However, most respondents (88 per cent) realise there are ways to leverage APIs more effectively. The top three improvements organisations wish to make in their API strategy execution are:

• Improving customer experience
• Speeding the pace of innovation
• Solving the problem of too many technology silos

Collaboration Driving API Usage

Nearly two-thirds (65 per cent) of organisations rely on APIs to improve collaboration with partners and enable partner innovation, while 60 per cent share APIs internally among development teams to deliver products and services faster. Slightly more than half (53 per cent) consume third-party APIs as part of their development, while 46 per cent create APIs as products for consumption by external developers.

Additional survey findings include:

• APIs Bring Organisation-Wide Benefits, from CX to Innovation: APIs have a direct impact on customer experience and business outcomes. The top five benefits organisations hope to achieve through API usage include:
  • Improved customer experience (49 per cent)
  • Accelerated innovation (48 per cent)
  • Improved collaboration among internal development teams (42 per cent)
  • Improved collaboration and joint development with partners and third-party development teams (41 per cent)
  • Improved developer experience (38 per cent)
• API Strategies are Still a Work in Progress: Less than one-third of organisations (31 per cent) have a fully executed API program or strategy, while 64 per cent are currently building one.
• A Platform for API Centralisation is Key: Nearly all (99 per cent) agree that it is important to adopt a centralised platform for APIs to enable developers and consumers to build, manage, publish, and consume APIs from one place.
  • However, only 13 per cent or organisations currently have a single platform in place to centralise access to APIs. The majority of organisations are using multiple platforms, each with varying levels of access to APIs across the organisation.