Nearly 60% of customer interactions have become digital since the pandemic hit, placing a significant burden on IT teams. What’s more, almost three in five business teams agree that integration stops them from growing.
API-led connectivity is the most effective way to address integration bottlenecks because it provides a 360-degree approach for connecting data to applications by utilising reusable, built-for-purpose APIs. Unlike point-to-point solutions, API-led connectivity turns every asset, process, and application available into reusable building blocks.
At Coforge we have been working with Anypoint Platform for almost a decade as Strategic Partners of MuleSoft. Having delivered multiple implementations at companies of different sizes and across a variety of industries, we have seen first-hand that taking an API-led approach to connectivity is essential for growth. In this blog post, we highlight five distinctive examples of how API-led connectivity can result in innovation and competitive advantage.
Frontier Agriculture drives innovation in customer experience
With highly detailed crop recording, market data and expert analysis all on a single, easy to access online platform, Frontier’s comprehensive farm management platform, MyFarm, gives real insight for Frontier customers.
After several years of running successfully, MyFarm’s technology needed to be enhanced with new functionality to keep up with Frontier’s ambitions and their customers’ needs.
To help Frontier make the most of its existing technology investment and speed up the development and launch of the optimised MyFarm, Coforge worked to seamlessly integrate MyFarm with a number of data sources using MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform as the key integration layer.
MyFarm now has 4000 users benefitting from simpler data management and insightful analysis tools, to inform their business decisions and ensure their farm and grain management is both efficient and resilient. Some of the benefits include:
- Faster development time on other projects thanks to API reusability
- Huge reductions in development effort, time and cost
- 30% faster new customer onboarding times
- 100% increase in MyFarm usage
Costa Coffee puts customers at the heart of digital transformation
Costa is committed to maximising the digital consumer experience and identified an opportunity to drive growth through increased customer loyalty. It had already built an award-winning loyalty program but needed to create a seamless experience across digital and physical touchpoints to take it to the next level.
However, with over 40 years since it first opened for business, Costa had accumulated several, legacy, systems and SaaS applications, leaving Costa with siloed data and inefficient data sharing. Coforge put together an API strategy and implemented Anypoint Platform to integrate back-end and front-end systems, making sharing information across applications and systems easy.
Costa leveraged its new enhanced connectivity to seamlessly run and track promotional campaigns to millions of their customers and update customer data in real-time, providing:
- More personalised information
- The ability to use loyalty cards on any device
- Reduced serving time by 50%.
FatFace accelerates e-commerce growth
FatFace, the UK based fashion and accessory retailer, recognised that legacy systems and siloed data were standing in the way of its plans to create a multi-channel, multi-geography strategy. With most of its customers preferring to shop ‘online’ or ‘online and in-store’, FatFace's new e-commerce platform was a priority.
Coforge focused on that priority and created a 3-layered architectural model that fully integrated the new e-commerce platform with their existing systems, giving FatFace the ability to replace any downstream systems without impacting the overall integration. Some of the key benefits FatFace enjoyed include:
- Experienced the best-ever week of full-price sales in the week leading up to Christmas.
- Eliminated data inaccuracies, such as out-of-stock inventory, and sped up access to business-critical information such as price details, store product data and customer history.
- Initiated its “shop your way” vision through an omnichannel strategy, enabling consumers to shop across all devices and channels with a consistent experience.
Principality gives customers the best mortgage experience
To move away from inefficient, time consuming and costly manual processes, Principality Building Society decided to transform its mortgage origination process starting with the procurement of a market-leading mortgage software.
Building APIs on Anypoint Platform, Coforge and Principality teams were able to connect backend systems to the new mortgage software as well as to trusted third parties that are involved throughout the mortgage origination process. The advantages to-date have been significant:
- Faster new partner onboarding and decreased time-to-market for new mortgage products thanks to the flexibility of the platform and the reusability of the APIs
- Improved adherence to regulatory and compliance requirements owing to the end-to-end automation of the mortgage application process
- Faster decision making with more accurate information
- Improved speed of integration of key platforms in the estate
Abcam transforms the entire supply chain
Connectivity, scalability, and accessibility are business critical for Abcam, the global leader in the supply of life science research tools. However, relying on hand-coded integrations was hindering its ability to deliver on its mission to support research, diagnostics, and drug discovery.
Abcam engaged Coforge as a trusted implementation partner to set up Anypoint Platform and to migrate existing integrations from their legacy system. Key outcomes enjoyed by Abcam include:
- Enabled a digital-first approach
- Transformed the entire supply chain to support 750,000 life science researchers all trying to innovate
- Established a Centre for Enablement to ensure successful adoption of new technologies and alignmen
Final thoughts
The results delivered by API-led connectivity have been proven repeatedly, bringing significant improvements across a wide array of industries including financial services, retail, fashion, life sciences, farming and more. Get in touch to see how your organisation would stand to benefit by following a more flexible, scalable and future-proof approach to integration.
If you would like to find out more about how you can leverage API-led integration and MuleSoft to drive growth, we can help. Give us a call or email us at Salesforce@Coforge.com.
