By Sandy Froonjian

You’ve probably heard a lot about APIs by now, but you might still be unsure if your organization needs an API integration. Of course, creating an API integration comes at a cost, so how can you determine if it’s worth the investment for your team? Look out for a few key indicators that suggest an API could be beneficial:

• Automate/Automatic Updates – If you often find yourself saying, “I wish this process could be automated between system,” or “It would be great if one system could send automatic updates to another,” or “I wish there was a way to automate this report.” Examples include streamlining employee onboarding, updating payroll information, managing timecards, handling expense reports, and managing purchase orders.

• Manual Entry – If you frequently enter a large amount of data manually, which can result in normal human errors/typos.
  
  
• Duplicate Entry – Not only is the data you are entering done manually, but it’s often duplicate data. You end up having to enter the same data twice (or more!), because you need it in two or more systems. Because of this, you feel it is not an efficient use of time.
  
  
• Time Consuming – Entering data manually and multiple times becomes very time consuming and monotonous. These tasks can drain valuable time better spent on more important work.
  
  
• Integrate – You or your team wish there was a way to somehow integrate multiple software together so that they could contain the same data.
  
  

If any of the situations above apply to your organization, it’s worth considering an API integration. If you’re already convinced of the need for an API but unsure if the cost is justified, think about this: would you rather spend X dollars every year paying an employee to manually enter data in multiple systems or invest a fraction of that amount in an API integration that can perform the task faster, allowing the employee to do more productive tasks.

If that situation sounds better for your team, then feel free to reach out to the sales team at PCI! They’ll be happy to provide a proposal and estimate for you.

See some of the integrations we’ve created here. If you have any additional questions, you can contact us today.