Scal-e API coming soon. What will it mean for users?

What is an API? 

An API is a set of definitions and protocols that make the creation and integration of software applications easier. API stands for Application Programming Interface. 

What do APIs do? 

With an API your product or service can communicate with other products and services without needing to know how they are implemented. This facilitates the development of applications. Saving time and money. 

In the design of new tools and products or in the management of existing ones, APIs provide greater flexibility and simplify design, administration and use, giving you the means to innovate. 

APIs are a little like contracts, forming an agreement between the parties, in which when the first party sends a remote request based on a special structure, the second party’s software must respond according to the conditions that have been set out. 

Why are APIs important? 

APIs simplify the way developers integrate new application components into an existing architecture, facilitating the way IT and business teams work together. 

Staying competitive means encouraging the rapid development and deployment of innovative services. Cloud-native application development is a good way to improve development speed. It is based on connecting an architecture of microservice applications via APIs. 

APIs are a simplified way of connecting an infrastructure through cloud-native application development. They allow you to share your data with your customers and other external users. Public APIs offer unique business value because they can simplify and develop relationships with your partners, and potentially monetise your data (the Google Maps API is a great example). 

• By accessing data through an API, customers are able to centralise information about their inventory. 
• Companies can change their internal systems without impacting their customers’ experience, provided that their API behaviour does not change. 
• With a public API, developers can develop an application that helps the customer find the product(s) they want to buy. This enables the company to increase its sales or take advantage of new business opportunities. 

Here are some examples of the potential of the Scal-e API: 
 
Let’s consider a retail company. 
Its objective is to unify the customer experience regardless of the touchpoint (point of entry of the interaction). 
 
Scal-e offers an API profile configuration for accessing the necessary data by touchpoint (contact data/centre preferences/coupons-benefits/order history, etc.) 
 
What does this contribute? 

• All channels have access to the same information at the same time. 

• All channels have access to the most up-to-date data. 

 Example:      

A customer who has just placed an order realises after a few minutes that he or she needs to change it. Regardless of the reason, the customer calls customer service to do this. 

Through their clienteling tool, the customer service department can see the latest order and modify it. 

Next, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a franchiser who doesn’t want to set up a central loyalty programme, but allows its franchisees to set up their own. 

Scal-e configures an API DM profile to manage a “franchisee” loyalty programme. 

Here the advantages are as follows: 

• The data is well segregated and the loyalty programme only applies to customers who have signed up to the loyalty programme that the franchisee has set up 
• The franchisee only has access to the data related to their restaurant 

Finally, let’s imagine a company that operates internationally. 
What are its objectives?  
It wants to analyse its customers’ behaviour through one of its partners outside Europe. 
 
The  Scal-e solution: 
– A Distributed Marketing API profile linked to the contact’s nationality can be set up to partition the data. 
– This API is deployed to retrieve customer data for analysis. 

What are the benefits?  

• The company requesting the data does not have to undertake any development work, simply configuring the profiles in the same way as the user profiles. 
• It retrieves the most recent data 

TheScal-e API is under development, and will be available to all platform users  very soon .

Stay tuned!

Discover the potential of the Scal-e API and what it can do for your brand.

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Scal-e is a CDP (Customer Data Platform) that enables you to connect several data streams (website, points of sale, CRM and others) in a single datamart. In this way, brands can access their data, such as unified customer profiles and real-time information, to get to know their customers better and respond to their needs at the right time, through the right channel. From the same platform, brands can also build their marketing strategy (audience builder, scripting, planning, loyalty programme) and apply it without having to change software.