What are the Benefits of B2B API Integration?
Address everything from technical to organizational to management challenges to securely expose and consume internal and external APIs in a controlled environment.
SEEBURGER BIS API Management and API Integration capabilities ensure seamless connectivity between your business, your customers and partners, and the valuable data that runs your business. Address everything from technical to organizational to management challenges to securely expose and consume internal and external APIs in a controlled environment.
Integrate data and unlock functionality of internal applications and systems
Are you pursuing an API-led B2B integration strategy or are you being asked to present backend system functionality through APIs, so that business value can be leveraged by mobile applications, customer services, and internal applications and systems? If so, or if you anticipate developing a B2B API integration strategy, benefit from low code API integration that supports the use of APIs as a façade to your valuable internal applications and systems.
Doing this can help you:
If you have an API-first strategy, chances are, design of your APIs comes first. API design solutions, however, offer little help when it comes to integrating APIs with internal systems, i.e. connecting your designed APIs to the systems they are supposed to communicate with. This leaves you to handle the integration. Coding these connections manually is time-consuming, requires substantial effort, and ties up valuable workforce. Not only can this significantly slow down implementation – because the integration logic is hidden in the individual developer’s code – but it is also difficult to maintain, support, and reuse. And finally, integrating multiple APIs manually can lead to ‘API integration spaghetti’, which can include multiple different coding solutions, a lack of transparency and visibility, and loss of control.
Stop coding: simply configure your API façade with the SEEBURGER BIS Platform
The BIS API capability includes standard adapters and pre-configured connectors for any system or endpoint integration. Using SEEBURGER low code API integration, you can build an API façade for all of your systems and applications by simply configuring the necessary system connections. Instead of creating and maintaining many different APIs independently, you can map and manage your interfaces from a single place. This also makes it easier to maintain documentation, which is helpful to your API users. Moreover, by decoupling your APIs from your backend systems, you can flexibly change your infrastructure (including the replacement of systems) without affecting the API façade.
Benefits of Using BIS for API integration:
Benefit from API integration as part of your B2B strategy
By weaving APIs into your B2B strategy, you are enabling new digital business and real-time patterns for document exchange. You are also taking steps to help drive an 'API First' design principle, and API-enable existing applications and systems with the following benefits:
- Parallel Software Development
APIs can be developed and tested simultaneously. - Reduced Risk of Failure
APIs enable organizations to grow rapidly and adapt to changing user requirements with greater ease. - Improved Development
Experienced developers can effortlessly retrieve information and utilize it to create applications. - Optimized Development
Building a B2B ecosystem with APIs as products and channels makes code more extensible and reusable.
B2B transactions and B2B/EDI integration are increasingly performed through real-time APIs versus traditional approaches. They are often the best approach to integrate partner ecosystems across company boundaries for supply chains, or financial services. Some example features and API integration benefits include:
- Fully automated exchange of structured business documents
Reduced transaction times/increased levels of straight-through processing - Synchronous transaction support
Real-time visibility into transactional status - Direct system connections without intermediaries
Increased reliability due to fewer touchpoints - Faster and easier error correction
Reduction in effort and cost - Granular business processing
Mitigation of latency without batch processing - Accurate, consistent and up-to-date information
Increased quality of service across business processes
The API shift in the supply chain
The enablement of real-time processing is the main reason why B2B API integration is becoming so attractive for use in supply chain processes, especially when it involves integrating third-party logistics partners: business departments don’t want to wait overnight to receive updated shipping (or other) information.
Case Study: A large auto manufacturer
When this company’s suppliers release an Advanced Shipping Notification (ASN), it is immediately posted into the company’s business application, where an inbound delivery is automatically generated. In case of inconsistencies, the ASN is rejected and the sender receives a detailed notification, in real-time, directly in their related business application. All parties involved have full transparency on the process status.
Errors can be corrected immediately with minimal effort and manual work. Above all, the supply chain process is dramatically improved, which is important for time-critical processes.
Today, instead of forwarding business documents in a single batch process e.g. overnight, the company’s collaborative business processes are now executed faster, with all parties having accurate and up-to-date information.
APIs as part of a B2B Strategy
Recognizing the power of APIs, business departments today are seeing the value of synchronous, real-time communication with business partners. API-based information exchange can be used to improve existing B2B integrations, expand collaboration, increase customer loyalty, attract new customers and reduce operational costs. Some examples of this include:
- Faster transactions: utilize up-to-date product / price data and real-time order call, confirmation and supply chain processing
- Better supply chain visibility: improve information exchange with logistic providers
- Multiple digital touch points for customer service: integrate a wide range of different procurement systems, exchange platforms or marketplaces
Functional overview of the SEEBURGER BIS API capability
Real-time integration means transparency – and transparency requires control. With the BIS API capability the IT department stays in control of its own and third party interfaces, users, permissions and file access at all times. The API Gateway ensures secure connection and integration in real time; API management provides administration, control and fast rollouts.
The SEEBURGER BIS API Gateway accepts API calls, checks the caller’s access permission and redirects the requests to the internal services or translates them to internal interface calls. This way, the BIS API Gateway protects your data assets and applications from unauthorized accesses and decouples internal interfaces from the published API.
The SEEBURGER BIS API Manager is a web-based application for managing APIs, with tailored, role-based features for API providers and users. It minimizes your effort for administration and communication. The BIS API Manager supports API providers to deploy and maintain APIs. From the web portal, API users get all required information around the clock, enabling them to work anytime, anywhere.
White PaperAdvantages of the BIS API capabiliy
The BIS API capability for the integration of applications and cloud services in real-time
Integration and exchange of data in real-time – controlled, secure and flexible
Cloud services, e-commerce, mobile applications: digital technologies offer enormous opportunities for new ways to generate value, and improve networking with partners, clients and target audiences. To be a successful digital business, real-time information is key. With a broad range of API technologies and preconfigured modules, the SEEBURGER API Lifecycle Management supports your company’s real-time integration scenarios.
BIS API capabilities enable seamless connectivity among various systems, applications, devices, and software, serving as a key component for achieving digital success.
Public cloud integration and data lake ingestion
With SEEBURGER, integrating public cloud services is easy: API-based SEEBURGER connectors communicate with cloud services for data storage from Amazon, Google or Microsoft and automatically take care of all the technical details - from authentication and protocol handling to connecting various data sources and data conversion to triggering process execution.
- Dedicated connectors to a wide range of public cloud services for storing data, including streaming and IIoT data
- Complete management of process execution
- Processing of files, bulk data or data streams from a wide variety of sources
- Simple configuration
Satisfy the hunger for data with public cloud integration
Rapidly advancing technological developments are providing you with increasing opportunities to make sense of your own data and use it strategically. Gain competitive advantage:
- Analyze structured and unstructured mass data
- Analyze streaming signals from Industrial-Internet-of-Things (IIoT) devices (e.g. sensors)
- Use of bulk data for machine learning and artificial intelligence
- Use of mass data for the development of new business models
- Gain insight from data generated from signals, events, or transactional data
It is not necessary to provide and manage the required infrastructure for storage and analysis applications yourself. Public cloud platforms such as Amazon's AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform take care of everything for you:
These providers not only provide data storage or data lakes in their clouds, but also functions for analytics, modeling, AI and machine learning as part of their cloud infrastructure.
Control data traffic and processing with data lake ingestion
To automatically ingest your data into various cloud-based applications or data lakes to increase efficiency and productivity, you need the following capabilities:
- Manage different authentication mechanisms
- Process different trigger mechanisms such as "time", "events", or "on existence"
- Support the underlying protocols as they are different for file operations, blob operations or streaming requests
- Automated management and monitoring of these processes
- Combination of data from different data sources for meaningful, high-quality input
- Targeted and automated modification, deletion, and retrieval of files
- Transformation of data into special storage formats such as AVRO or PARQUET for efficient processing
SEEBURGER connectors: the simple solution for public cloud integration and data lake ingestion
As an add-on to the BIS API capability – or any other solution from SEEBURGER – we offer API-based connectors for various public cloud services that can handle all of the above tasks. This makes public cloud integration as easy as filling out a form: All you have to do is configure your tasks, and we'll take care of all the technical details.
