“API (Application Programming Interface) is an acronym that is really taking hold in the digital world. But do businesses understand what a game-changer it actually is? asks the CEO of Visma Software, Øyvind Larsen.

Open API is about creating great user experiences — as much for businesses themselves as for their customers. And it's more than just a trend!

“To think that APIs are transitory would be as naive as saying the same thing about the internet in the 90s. Just look at bank integrations: It's not a selling point anymore. Today, no one skips the roof over the fact that the accounts are integrated with the bank. It is a shelf item when choosing a supplier. Soon API will be on the same shelf,” Larsen says.

Read more: See Visma's integrations here.

He says that many people he talks to are unsure about new technologies because they only think about the complicated aspect.

---- We must not lose sight of the practical benefits technology brings to businesses and their customers. The advantage of API integrations is that you stitch together all your solutions. It doesn't help to automate your various processes if you end up having to move data between systems.

Examples of APIs in everyday life:

• When you pay an invoice with Vipps or Klarna, there is an API between these and the provider you pay money to.
• In video meetings, there are APIs between your email and the meeting platform such as Teams or Zoom. There also an API on the camera of your PC or mobile.
• Every time you can verify your identity via BankID, it is because the website you are visiting has an API integration to BankID.

You can't be absolutely everything to your customers

An API is a small piece of code that is the key between two IT applications. The API can also link a single application together with a platform. Larsen highlights three players who got on the field early:

Take Microsoft, for example. They offer their customers over 600 integrations. Slack has over 2,400 integrations and extensions that users can choose from. And if we look at Google Chrome, they have closer to 200, 000. What these players realized early on was that they couldn't be everything to their customers. In order to provide the best customer experience, they needed to make it as easy as possible for users to connect on their additional services.

Larsen believes that the goal for companies must be to build a unified infrastructure where all the data is interconnected. When your systems can do the manual job the employees did before, your employees go from being punchers to becoming controllers instead. In this way, there will be both more insight and less errors in the data.

Read more: How to succeed in online shopping? With API of course!

Open API reduced mispicking from 20 to one percent

Socrates Kalenderidis is the entrepreneur behind Foodpartner. After several years in the restaurant and food business, there was one thing he knew: He had to streamline every little finance and logistics process.

“It doesn't help with a lot of experience with food and products if you don't know how to transport the product from A to B. I did market analysis, talked to people and read up to teach me how Foodpartner was going to be better than anyone else in this industry. I quickly realized that the prerequisite was to have a good system at the bottom,” he says.

“Now the balance is correct, and there is accuracy in both receiving and picking. That is a tremendous reassurance! — Socrates Kalenderidis, founder of Foodpartner

When Kalenderidis learned that the logistics part of Visma Net has an open API for integrations, it was absolutely crucial.

“I want the system to work for me, not for me to work for the system. When you're going to integrate something with an older solution, you need extremely many customizations. Even if the system is updated, you still need to build the functionality you need. Now we're down to a mispick of one per cent. We see the same tendency in merchandise reception. It's a huge relief for everyone. Now the balance is right, and there is accuracy in both receiving and picking. That is a tremendous reassurance!

The Opportunities Market for Third-Party Vendors

Integrations thus give companies like Foodpartner a unique opportunity to position themselves. But then one has to see the possibilities and understand the value an API integration provides.

“Socrates Kalenderidis is an excellent example of a leader who understands the enormous potential of technology. Integrations are powerful, and all proper business systems today should have a good API, Øyvind Larsen believes.

When it's so easy to extract the best components and stitch them together, the door is wide open for all sorts of third-party solutions.

“That means companies can have all sorts of industry-specific niche solutions and plug them right into their rig. This gives water on the mill to third-party solutions as well, and we see that the ecosystem of Norwegian companies is increasing.

The world eats software

Larsen doesn't think we're going to be too keen on talking about integrations in the future. It's simply going to be part of the usual overall package and a user experience businesses expect from their vendors.

American entrepreneur Marc Andreessen once said that “software is eating the world.” But I think it's the world that eats software. Choosing a supplier that takes integrations seriously should be the minimum requirement for Norwegian companies.