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Q: In which of the following areas does your organization believe APIs will create the most value?

Responses to our recent survey on the API Economy indicated that external partnerships are the most important motivation for an API program. According to Claude Baudoin, "APIs are seen primarily as a technology solution for making existing pathways smoother. Company A's business model may already require that it exchange information with partner B, or that it capture into its own systems some customer information submitted by B (think, for example, of an insurance underwriter and an insurance broker). APIs help make this a system-to-system process, instead of a human-mediated one. This clearly reduces errors due to manual reentry of data as well as delays due to manual or batch processes, which are replaced by real-time ones."

* Excerpted from "API Program: Strategic or Tactical?," (Login Required) Cutter Benchmark Review, Vol. 14, No. 1.

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