With daily boots-on-the-ground IT duties and customer-centric business responsibilities, API Product Managers are often stretched in opposite directions. But an API strategy and portal that goes beyond the transactional value of APIs and treats APIs as products that enable business capabilities can ease the tension. Here are 4 steps API product managers can take to get there.
1. Start looking at APIs as business enablers, not just connectors
At the end of the day, your responsibility is to help generate the most revenue for your company and partners. Let that be your main purpose. Shift your perspective of APIs as just a one-to-one transactional entity that elicits a specific response, to one that combines other APIs, documentation, and examples to deliver a desired business capability. Then make sure you can track and measure your APIs' performance and usage so they align to business goals.
2. Choose an API marketplace that's business-focused
Embrace an API marketplace that lets you curate your APIs in a contextual way that makes them more discoverable, adoptable, and applicable to the business, while letting you monetizing your API assets by treating them as the value-rich products they are. A business-focused API marketplace will give your internal and external developers a single place to find and use the precise API products required to embed new digital service into their apps – accelerating time-to-market and business results.
3. Insist on a universal API management platform
An API marketplace built to deliver maximum business value can't be hemmed in by factors that will limit its effectiveness. That means it must run on a universal API management platform: one that gives app developers the freedom to use the development tools that work best for them without worrying about restrictions imposed by multiple API gateway vendors or cloud deployments. A universal API platform opens the door to automated, agent-based API observability and subscription management.
4. Make sure both your IT and digital business priorities are supported
Be supported no matter which hat you're wearing. For digital business priorities, aim for faster go-live and ROI realization for each project, greater API business value through better API adoption, and alignment of IT and business goals. On the IT side, look for lower TCO and API duplication, full compliance, tracking, and auditing accuracy, increased API security to reduce data breaches and missed SLAs, and balance developer autonomy with centralized management.
