Digital is Life

Life has drastically changed in the last couple of years. I used to wake up to buzzing alarm but now I get up with the favourite song on my Sonos music system. By the time I complete my breakfast the smart gadget tells me how long it would take me to drive to work and if you have smart applications then they will start the navigation as soon as you are in car. Imagine in cold weather you can operate your car heating from your smart device and pre-heat and make it ready to go, welcome to the cozy world. (This is already being done in JLR and BMW's of the world)

Thanks to Digital disruption and API's.

From wake up alarm to the bed time reading all has changed or changing, just because of digital disruption.

This disruption has been acknowledged as the 4th Industrial Revolution, and it is exponential growth rather than traditional linear. So either the businesses adapt the future or get knocked off, as we all know Digital is Destiny for organisations to stay in the market and given its exponential growth the time to react has to be fast enough.

Till now I was talking more about the changes that are visible to everyone (on the canvas stuff), now let's talk about what is changing behind the scenes due to this revolution...

Making of Digital - 

So from the face of the change it looks pretty cool as it gives customer's what they are after - everything has turned smart, just a touch away with faster delivery model and better quality. All this simplicity, agility to respond to customer needs, quality products with better pricing can be achieved by using below technology landscape -

                                                                                               Figure 1 - Technology Landscape with API Management

• Mobile Backend as a Service(MBaaS) - 
• API Management
• Analytics

I will not go into the details of each of it as its too technical and can be read over the web. The crux is that API management is at heart of it.

Changing Business Proposition -   

Let me bring the focus back on how the business proposition is getting changed -

• Movies and TV series on the go, stream anywhere anytime, you know the brand I am talking about.
• Car service on demand with auto receipt
• Paying Parking on the go
• listening music via streaming 
• Ordering take away has become so easier.

If you look your daily life you will find N number of similar examples. We as a customer are getting so used to it that we can't even think life without it.

Let's look into some scenarios that companies might be already working on or need to start thinking in that space..

• Fit bands can be integrated with fitness clubs and apps like MyfitnessPal or may be also with health clinics.
• Bank account opening within 2 hrs via video call and online document submission instead of going to the branch which currently takes around 2 days to a week.
• Smart offices - Give your employees a better experience and ease of using organisation assets by reducing operational cost.

Definitely there are hundred and thousands of other ideas and all this would be targeted to give enriched customer experience and tap outside-out opportunities. Opportunities which are unknown and are outside of your current business boundaries but are waiting to be tapped with a model that can attract and push them towards the usage of the product or services provided by your business. Below is the Gartner view on the same suggesting to take advantage of the Internal and External Business algorithms -

                                                                                                Figure 2- Courtesy Gartner AADI London 2016 

Technology has enabled and helped towards the growth of self service or subscription based business model, helping customers to take their stuff along with them and use whenever they want. That's the ease and value added by digitalisation and thus generated the demand from customers to have more similar value added services in each area of life, will it be health, utility, grocery, home security, home appliances, etc.

Soon we will see cross business model where the apps will get integrated with multiple services from different vendors, because that's the customer experience we want. for e.g booking taxi's via maps and then ordering food on your way through one user interface. Above Fit band example also falls in the same category.

Various survey have shown that the growth of the API economy will be immense in coming years, below are some useful links around different domains with emerging changes and the adoption of API's around that -

Telecom - Telecom Network API Marketplace
Banking - The Open Banking Standards
                Banking Reform
Water Utilities - Changing Water Utilities norm for wholesale and retail
Public Sector - Singapore Government API


Last week I was in Gartner AADI London event and my take away of the 2 day event was "Imbibe and Foster APIs" if you are in business.

Digitalisation has changed life style and in coming years I can see that its going to change the way we live, both for good and bad(health impact by using smart phones :) )!