Sachin G Kulkarni

Many business in past have  demonstrated their API success.On the other hand, I have also seen failure of API. The lesson learnt from these observations are worthy.If a business have intelligent API strategy then it move towards success else it get back to the point where they are at beginning.

Business has to ask them-self : Private or Public or Partner ? All of them expose company’s data asset in varying levels. Company’s long term business strategy must  guide to find  answer to this question. This blog post throw some light on practical business possibilities with all of them.

Private API

Business starts it’s API journey with private API.

• They help to facilitate integration of the different application and system used in the company.
• They improve the internal operation
• Reduce the cost
• Make business decisions based on real-time data

Read my another blog post to understand Top 5 business benefits of private API

Many business today have discovered different revenue channels through collaboration with their partners and 3rd party services.Such collaboration is made possible by opening up company’s data asset via API.

While partner API is essential for growth of the company, building them needs efficient planning and good start. One such good start is building a private API first.

Companies have turned towards API first approach with a vision to build strong revenue stream after few years.Hence one may feel API is not worth investing from way beginning.But the reality is on the other side.This blogs share few thoughts on immediate benefits of private API.

Also read: A drive into the core principle of REST API 

How many of you take breaks often during work in your office ? Statistics say 1/4th of the workers do not take breaks other than lunch.Breaks improve the productivity at the work. Short breaks can increase concentration, alertness and work speed.Get to know more about advantages of taking breaks in below info graphics

 

Click to Enlarge Image

Freemium model is used as an effective go-to market strategy among Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors. This is a marketing tactic where the vendor has both free and premium version of their product. The ultimate goal of the vendor is to convert the non-paying customers to paying customers.

Many startups founders especially with a technology background consider this as best model to enter the market. Of course the psychology of free among the users helps company to build substantial traction. The product or service will have more signups and get mentioned in blogosphere and social media. Everything looks great for few days from launch. However, at times the things may go wrong!

Freemium has significant risk associated with it. If not managed wisely; it may lead to increase in overhead, negative product positioning and finally lead to overall failure. This blog helps to understand risk factors of “Freemium Model” in SaaS Software.

Being online wasn’t a great investment few years ago. Getting tied up with as many travel agents would get more leads for package tour operators. This worked well for many tour operators. Even after sharing a small amount of profit for getting leads, the tour operators were in a good state. Unfortunately as the internet evolved, this formula became less effective.

New set of people called “Travel aggregators” evolved in the industry. These are Internet Company with all information about the tour. Like travel agents they acted as a ticketing agents with one big difference – They built a brand around it. As the brands awareness among the people increased, tour operators were forced to get tied with these internet companies to stay in the business.

This change proved the potential of internet to tour operators. All these days tour operators didn’t invest much on brand building. Now this is the only formula to stay profitable in the industry. Even today many tour operators do not have an idea on how to take their business online in order to attract the customers. This article will focus on the minimal solution required for tour operators to get online.

Today I have revamped a my blog design. The new design is attractive, mobile friendly and more informative. Cover photo of this article hosts the new design of the website.

But wait, what’s wrong with the old design ?

After using the old design for year and half I have found many drawbacks of the old design.In simple words It was not impressing the customer who have landed on my website. Below are the few things which every consultant like me must have in their website.

Have a vision: Have a vision for your website.Just having blog don’t get more customers. Vision of my website is to introduce myself & my service to my customer.

Today I have launched a brand new design for  my personal site. This new website design which you have landed on is more mobile friendly and loads fast.This is more attractive than the former one.

 

The latest trend in software architecture design is to implement REST API. This is a first step to make the “internet of things” possible. If you wonder what is internet of things then give a thought to your imaginations.

“Say you are coming back from your client meeting in a cab and you are hungry. You visit the restaurant website from your Smartphone and place the order. Your bank paid the restaurant on your consent. Mean while, you get an e-mail from your client and you need a print-out of it. So you send a request to your office printer to get it printed. Now you reached the office and pay the driver via your bank with single tap and then head towards your cubical and see both the print out and food is ready on your table “. Wow! That’s a great experience.

You had this wonderful experience because everything – your printer, bank account, and restaurant is online. They can speak to each other! This is called internet of things. You can connect the between devices, services and more seamlessly.

Now, do want your app to be part of “Internet of Things”? If your answer is YES in a corner of your mind then your app must be built on REST API. Technically REST API is a one of the means to achieve it. Using REST API, restaurant can speak to your bank and your smart phone can speak to the printer at your office.

Today I got a chance to talk in one of the PHP Meet up . My presentation was about “REST API Best Practices & Implementing it in codeigniter”. Below is the presentation and few pictures of the same.

Last few days ago, some interesting question popped up in one of the Linked-In group related to travel. This question came from someone who organize itinerary for his customers. The author of that question wants to include local market visit as a part of the itinerary.

The author writes the outcome of this idea in the description of the question. He states this idea will help the travelers to get a chance to learn about the culture of the place, habits of the people. The traveler would enjoy learning new things and this will turn out to be valuable time spend as a part of their itinerary. That’s interesting idea…isn’t it?

The above expected outcome really seems conveying. However, practically there are many risk tied up with that idea. The primary risk is the customer experience – which is the major factor for long terms reputation of the company or service. Yes, at first glance of idea – one may feel that it would be a best customer experience…But, not. Read on to know why?

Customer experience would be good in terms of new culture, habits and more. However, you are not guaranteed with how local people of the place behave with your customer. If some misunderstanding happens between the local people & your customer, then bad impacts are carried out easily than the good ones. The misunderstanding may happen because of lack of open-mindedness on both the side. This is one among many points which came out of discussion. Further, these experience turns out to be bad memories, which no one likes to have it as a take away of the trip.