Value Creation in your Business
through Digitization - Part 2

In my last blog, I discussed how digital transformation has become the most important element of any business evolution. I explained how telcos offer a wide range of services that cater around its core business, which makes it a perfect example of a “Digital Lifestyle Provider.”

Now, let’s take the example of the government sector. Governments can also monetize APIs through different ways, which may not be just limited to utilities but sharing the information in a secured way like providing citizen information to banks and financial institutions, travel agencies, law enforcement agencies, visa verification agencies, etc. So, governments can not only offer citizen services through mobile apps but also can use the citizen data for other value added services by partnering with several private enterprises or government agencies.

Figure: Example of Government as Lifestyle Providers

Now let’s take the example of banks. Micro insurance can be a good partnership opportunity between the banks and telcos. Mobile money is also a good example of such partnerships. In India, PayTM is a prominent brand and is a very popular digital wallet. Likewise, banks can also offer their own digital wallets as it is always easy for the users to operate within a known environment. Also, it is easy for the banks to link the bank accounts with the digital wallets. So, payment industry brings a huge opportunity and open APIs are the key means to implement this. Hospitality industry can tie-up with banks to offer customized holiday packages and this can be managed through APIs.

Figure: Example of Government as Lifestyle Providers

So, you have to think about finding your core value provision, your core capabilities, mapping through IT systems built on APIs and making them open APIs. And when I say “Open API,” it means that any third party developer or organization or an individual can login to your developer portal, discover your APIs, subscribe to it and use them without any human intervention. Facebook, Twitter and Google are the trendsetters in the Open API world. Today, anyone can search developer.twitter.com and request for a trial developer key and build their own app. And, you need to pay them just at the time of going live. There are several models to do this. That’s the second part of the story; but, the concept of APIs is now following the self-service model and that’s the model you need to think of.

In my next blog, I will share a few more examples from energy management and manufacturing sectors and will discuss how APIs built on your IT backbone can open new revenue potential for you. Stay tuned!

About the Author

Karthik TS - is the Head of the Centre of Excellence at Torry Harris. His responsibilities include spearheading organization-wide initiatives, and building solution accelerators and automation products such as the API-o-Blocks, for clients world-wide. Karthik focuses on the areas of API/SOA, Cloud Computing, Mobile and Digital Transformation.