What is Digital Transformation?
Digital Transformation is the way to modernize organizational processes in order to deliver best customer experience and build a digital ecosystem within and outside the organization. Digital Transformation (DT or DX) opens new revenue channels and streamlines businesses operations.
Digital transformation helps in creating new business models and meaningful partner and customer ecosystems that allow a business to evolve with the times. Instead of trying to compete by bettering your existing products and services, digital transformation is about disrupting the norm and offering new services and products that transform your business.
A recent IDC study shows that two thirds of CEOs place digital transformation at the heart of their business strategies. The process of digital transformation aims to automate, simplify and integrate systems in order to increase profits and streamline business through expanding ecosystems.
Digital Transformation Framework
In order to grab a part of the action and participate in the race to form these digital ecosystems, every enterprise worth its salt is involved in a transformation of some sort. The market is now filled with digital transformation solutions to cater to this need. While having many such solutions is indeed advantageous, a word of caution is to not invest in these prior to getting your API strategy right.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are your means to modernizing legacy, without causing any major disruption to your existing services. They enable access to data, functionality and features of an application, or even a service or operating system. This ability to access new-found data or feature helps to further extend your capability or create new offerings by combining them. As APIs are at the core of any transformation exercise, the role of an effective API strategy in digital transformation cannot be underestimated. You also need to have a provider who has a solid Digital Transformation framework in place. Below is an example:
Torry Harris offers digital transformation consulting services for enterprises & businesses. Get in touch with us for more information on how we can help in laying out your Enterprise Digital Transformation Strategy.
Why do enterprises need an API Strategy for Digital Transformation?
Apart from the obvious reasons of enforcing discipline in how your APIs are chosen, built and managed, we need a strong API strategy to ensure our IT systems are up to date to meet changing customer needs. As customer preferences change, our systems have to be familiar with and be able to talk the language of voice assistants, IoT, VR, AR, chatbots, AI, predictive analytics and more. It is now a necessity for businesses to extend their capabilities and remain available at all popular customer touch-points.
In order to modernize your existing legacy set-up and maintain the right balance of visibility, stability, control, innovation and costs, effective API strategies have become integral to achieving success with your digital transformation initiatives. In the whitepaper ‘Five key drivers of API-driven Digital Transformation’, we discuss the 5 top priorities that businesses look at fulfilling at the end of their Enterprise Digital Transformation process.
Key aspects of an API Strategy
An API strategy for enterprise digital transformation is made up of four important aspects-
Practices like Agile development, the use of cloud-based technologies, implementing DevOps, an API-first approach, building a microservice architecture etc. – all of these require large organizations to make some internal culture and mind-set changes, to socialize these initiatives for them to succeed.
Dos and don’ts for creating an effective API Strategy
Here are some of the dos and don’ts businesses should remember when creating an enterprise API strategy-
DosUnderstand your current IT infrastructure, especially data, for creating an effective API strategy
Differentiate between must-have features and nice-to-have features and focus more on the must-haves
Prefer an API-first approach, as it accelerates the speed with which you will be able to communicate with customers
Ensure that public API documentation is easily accessible
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Don’tsAvoid redundant API functionalities as they make it confusing for 3rd party developers to select the right API as per their requirement
Never start working on an API business strategy unless you have a defined project and purpose
Avoid using existing security patterns (even of popular APIs) without adequate research as they might not be the best choice in your scenario
Do not neglect the 3rd party developer communities as they your key to increase the reach of your APIs
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How a specialist API Strategy and delivery service provider like Torry Harris can help?
Specialist solution providers like Torry Harris Integration Solutions (THIS) offer step-by-step guidance and tools to draft and execute an effective API strategy.
With more than 20 years of focused integration experience, the company provides consultancy and implementation services to several leading Telcos, BFSI customers and Energy conglomerates in defining API Strategy, Implementation of APIs using a factory approach for scale and cost-effectiveness, managed services maintenance and ecosystem creation using a digital marketplace solution.
DigitMarketTM is an industry-leading, API-driven, marketplace solution that is helping enterprises create & personalize their digital marketplaces in quick, easy steps. It has built-in API Management capability that helps monetize APIs in a secure and scalable manner.
Being specialists in crafting and delivering API strategy and digital transformation services, Torry Harris has a number of success stories with its clients.
Digital Transformation Examples
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Torry Harris-Schneider Electric Engagement: The Schneider–Torry Harris engagement is a good example of the on-going trend of enterprises preferring vendors that can offer specialized skills, flexibility, and responsiveness in order to deliver high-profile, mission-critical work within time and budgetary constraints.
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This case study also illustrates several aspects that make for a successful digital transformation narrative, as well as the importance of working with a vendor that possesses the correct technical expertise and tools to deliver what is required within established time frames and quality standards -
Moving beyond mobile, transformation to a Digital Service Provider: An acquisition became an opportunity for a fast-growing Irish mobile network operator to better align to changing customer expectations i.e. to think beyond mobile by building a connected digital ecosystem.
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Creation of an integrated digital ecosystem using APIs for a UK Telco major: One of the largest Mobile and Landline operators in the UK was looking for new channels to engage with partners and businesses. Creation of an integrated ecosystem or a platform for engagement, along with a robust API Management strategy were seen as ways to realize this objective.
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- Leverage out-of-the-box API products and frameworks to accelerate transformation
- Work smarter with platform tools to scale and realize your digital business objectives
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Whitepaper
Analyst Speak
(THIS) has been cited among notable vendors by Forrester Research in its report ‘The API Management Software Landscape, Q1 2024’. The report recognizes Torry Harris as a provider offering API management solutions with a geographic focus in the EMEA & APAC regions.
Forrester observes that the initial rush to “lift and shift” to the cloud has now been replaced by a focus on modernization and digital transformation. Cloud migration is the first step in a long journey to take advantage of the latest cloud-native technologies and services.
Torry Harris is a 'Strong Performer' in The Q3 2022 Forrester Wave™ for API Management Solutions. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps technology architecture and delivery (TAD) professionals select the right one for their needs.
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