API integrations allow businesses to take advantage of established, reliable cloud applications. These applications have already undergone extensive development and testing, reducing the risk of errors or malfunctions that may occur in a freshly developed system. This approach also negates the need for businesses to invest heavily in building complex functionalities from scratch, significantly reducing development costs.
Furthermore, this integration can drastically shorten the development timeline. Instead of spending weeks or months building new features, developers can integrate with APIs of existing services, which can often be accomplished in a much shorter timeframe. This speedier development process saves valuable time, enabling businesses to launch their products or services more quickly.
Moreover, utilizing ready-made services through APIs can potentially reduce risk. Established cloud applications have been thoroughly tested and used by many users, so they are likely to have a lower risk of encountering serious issues. They often come with robust security measures in place, providing additional peace of mind. In addition, these services typically offer ongoing support and regular updates to ensure they remain functional and secure, further reducing the risk for businesses.
Easy! Find existing cloud based software with a good API, that already does most of what you need.
We have made PHP applications talk to many different services in the past, here are a few::
Accounting systems are available as clearly defined, easy to use, low cost and well established as cloud services. This makes accounting an ideal place for bespoke software development to stop and packaged software to take over. Pushing invoices from a custom system into an accounting system is a good place to start integrating. From there it is easily possible to build further integration such as Retrieving customer balances or syncing contacts, items, products etc.
We have recently updated several Xero integrated apps to use oauth2.
Collecting payment via credit cards online is quick and easy for the customer, and provides certainty of payment for the website owner. There are different payment gateway options depending on who you bank with and which currencies you want to be paid in. We have integrated into a variety of gateways including DPS Payment Express, Paystation, Worldpay, Sage Pay and BNZ.
SMS text message is a quick and certain way to get a message through. Users can be slow to react to emails, SMS, on the other hand, is usually a more direct notification. A common use for SMS is sending calendar reminders to your users.
The most basic integration is putting a map on your website so customers can find you. However, google maps gets a lot more sophisticated. We have even used it to create maps with routes for a tour company. Google maps can plot customers, jobs or listing items on a map to get an idea of where your business comes from. Geocode, reverse geocoding and geo fencing are all possible with Google maps.
As mailing lists and customer databases grow, sending quality marketing emails becomes both more important and far more complex. Using Mailchips API, we can keep your customer database synchronised with your mailing lists, plus group and tag your customers. Then let Mailchimp deal with complex HTML emails and delivery issues.
Spam filters are getting much more fussy these days and they are easy to upset and end up on a black list. We usually let someone else take care of the headaches of styling emails and making sure the recipient gets it.
Know where your users are coming from. Geo IP helps us identify where users are coming from and present content relevant and appropriate to the user's country. Perhaps you want to have different pricing for each region or present more accurate shipping estimates. MaxMind GeoIP provides highly accurate estimates of a users location so you can present the correct content to the user and track activity by country, state or city.
Often inventory, stock and pricing are easy enough for us to code directly into custom software. However, inventory and pricing can become complex when multiple warehouses are involved let alone when multiple currencies, product assemblies and/or complex pricing levels come in to play. This is when we will integrate to Unleashed which deals with complex inventory issues and has a good, solid API so we can easily integrate your systems.
Today much of our programming work involves integrating custom systems with multiple cloud services.