We’re all familiar with the expression “you can’t manage what you don’t measure,” but people have to know that they're measuring these things as well. The API product manager and the teams that come together in a new way to collaborate on API delivery have to really understand some of the dimensions of what they're measuring. (Learn more in this article: KPIS for APIs – the execution imperative in a x24 digital acceleration.)
We could think about that in the same way we think about other forms of product intelligence: if you're going to market with products and services – and we are really considering APIs as products – then these things are also very relevant.
There are always two sides; there are the things that are dictated or controlled by those producing APIs, and then the product managers really need to work together not only with the people who are delivering APIs but on the business side as well, to understand what the value proposition of this API-enabled product is – what pains they're solving.
Are you fixing business processes that you could streamline, or are you enabling data to be shared in a new way? For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, organizations are opening up the data science community for clinical research and development of new pharmaceutical products.
These product managers are having to bridge the gap between those who are producing APIs and those on the consuming side, understanding who's using them, ways for promoting their use and recombination, tracking things like the number of business capabilities delivered as API products in the marketplace or linking that directly to some new revenue opportunities.
It's impossible to do that if you're just looking from the producer’s side at your API management console and trying to piece all that together. The API Product Manager’s role is really about making that link to the business. Being able to measure those sorts of things – the number of consumers, the number of applications that are using the API products – that's where the focus is going to be and that's where an API marketplace delivers that kind of insight for your organization.
Want to know more? Watch this 30-minute demo to learn how to get the most out of your APIs with a custom, turnkey enterprise API marketplace.
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