APIs & Integration Strategy
10 minutes
min of reading
March 28, 2023

API Strategy for Legacy Modernization

Content Team
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Understanding the Digital Journey 

Businesses are transitioning from the “App” economy to the “Connected Systems” economy.

While the app is the gateway where we conduct digital transactions and relationships, the real evolution that’s taking place is happening behind the scenes. It’s no longer a world of digital transformation; we’re experiencing digital acceleration. The global spend under digital investment is more than $2 trillion, and businesses are trying to do more and deliver more through technology. Enterprises are pursuing cohesive digital experiences on both sides of the supply chain and searching for new technology to help them offer more value to customers and improve insights into their supply chain and the delivery of goods and services.

Legacy Systems Challenge Modern Business Integration

The challenge businesses face is not the investment in legacy systems but the mountains of data that reside in these systems, the intricacy and specific application of the data, and how businesses envelop the data and include it in modern digital systems so data continues to deliver value.

Businesses are striving to produce a cohesive data strategy. As companies grow, creating and maintaining a unified view of the customer and the customer experience becomes more essential. The industry is taking us to a space where businesses embrace outside partners to deliver an ecosystem experience where customers are better understood, and connections with partners and vendors happen seamlessly. For example, customers can buy a car digitally and choose financing, warranties, and insurance in a seamless experience taking less time and covering more opportunities. Success in today's business landscape requires agile architecture and legacy modernization, and it's time for companies to embrace and enhance the digital journey.

Banco Topazio is an excellent example of how embracing a more digital and open interface can generate more ROI. The bank went from a traditional closed platform to a connected ecosystem and grew its loan origination from 120 loans each month to more than 65,000. Read more here.

Styles of Digital Platforms Have Varied Risks and Returns

A robust API strategy can reduce data cybersecurity security risks and exposures. With modern architecture, embracing your API strategy as part of your overall asset management strategy is vital. Businesses can start their strategy by connecting their internal systems. This method provides the lowest risk for exposure. Netflix is a good example of a company using this strategy. 

Restricted access is a bit riskier and involves connecting with supply chains, customers, and the Internet of Things (IoT.) Amazon has an extensive restricted network of customers and suppliers.

Finally, public platforms offer the most connections and also pose the highest risk. Uber, an example of a public platform, connects with maps, payments, chat, driver payroll and many other applications. 

Business Must Innovate to Scale

Today we see innovation in startups, medtech, fintech, etc., leveraging digital opportunities. In the future, we’ll be even more connected in a more complex world as experiences multiply and more data correlation happens. 

Sensedia customer Cyrano.ai pulls data from a variety of sources to deliver recommendations on how to better engage in communication. The platform uses hundreds of APIs to connect its resources and customers. Digital acceleration is real, and businesses sticking to legacy systems without API integration could be left behind. 

How Do Businesses Embrace the Challenge to Change?

Sensedia faced this scenario when working with a large, established insurance company looking to integrate lots of legacy data, numerous applications, and multiple architectures. The company wanted to deliver enhanced digital channels to improve customer experience and create additional business revenue streams.

The company had an app and was trying to deliver all the services in a single view for its customers. Because it relied on legacy systems, the organization struggled to improve customer service, provide a unique experience, and know the customers. The solution needed to work quickly, independent of the channel (phone call, app, online…) Sensedia put new technology in place to enable legacy data, protect the data, and allow teams to develop new tech that maximized legacy data and systems.

Composable Enterprise Strategy to the Rescue

Sensedia’s team divided the insurance company’s business streams into value streams and provided each stream with everything needed to innovate. The organization needed to move from its current multichannel maturity level to a more composable experience. Sensedia designed an API layer to place on top of the legacy systems and solved the scenario to successfully include new cloud providers, delivery channels, external systems and partners. Sensedia created a single integration platform enabling consumable public and partner APIs, composite APIs that retrieve information from third parties, internal APIs and system APIs. Sensedia enabled all the new services behind the scenes with the company's existing services and created a modern platform that worked with their legacy system and allowed the insurance company to meet its objectives. Embracing this transformation using APIs turned the architecture discoverable, reusable, secure and reliable. Being able to use the API strategy as the transformation catalyst boosted the agility, and at the same time, gave complete control of a complex scenario. The new integration layer provided security, and the API strategy was a catalyst to generate more business, new customers, and added operational strengths.

There’s an API for Almost Everything

As APIs increase, security attacks targeting APIs increase too. Having strong API security in place is critical for businesses. Sensedia works with each customer to streamline their API    needs and determine the security requirements for customers’ landscapes. Sensedia’s platform provides visibility and traceability out-of-the-box to ensure the security is there and the development team is providing the right tool at the right time.

When businesses look for a partner to unlock their legacy data and allow new connections and opportunities, a strong API platform and strategy are the answer to digital growth. Sensedia has the experience and award-winning solution to help customers experience their digital acceleration journey and ensure they can capitalize on their data, connections and strengths.

To learn how Sensedia can help your business accelerate quickly and safely, visit our website!

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