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NTEN Open API Discussion

So I listened in on the N-TEN discussion on open APIs today. In NTEN’s selling of the event, it was never really clear to me what they meant by “open APIs.” The vendors all said they do have open APIs, and some said they are worried about security, and that’s why they haven’t opened their APIs more.

Here’s what crystalized for me on the call today. Nonprofits need technology tools to help support their business processes. No one tool can meet all their needs. So they will have many tools. They need strategies for using more than one tool in their organization.

A common strategy we’ve all seen many times is do nothing. Have more than one system, and do double entry. The systems don’t know about eachother, and nothing is shared. Track your donors in your CRM, and double enter those gifts into Qickbooks, for example. A drag, no?

Another strategy is to build your systems on a platform to which you can add appropriate components. Add some CRM functionaltiy to you CMS by installing some modules. Works great if all you want to install is in the same language, on the same platform, and the same server. If not, you’re back to the first strategy.

A third strategy is to connect technology tools that are addressing related business processes via web services APIs. Send mass emails through an email blasting service, and pull the names from your CRM living with another vendor. Can really simplify things for the users, and give lots of flexibility. You can switch email providers fairly easily. But the APIs have to be built by the vendors, and they have to be connected by someone who knows what they are doing.

Will the vendors build good APIs that will make this third strategy possible? Some have. Others won’t. Some because they can’t pull it off technically, but more because they have business reasons not to. Vendor lock in is one reason. Not wanting to deal with developers and customer questions might be another. Prioritizing other feautures yet another.

Whateve vendors want to do, customers are starting to demand this stuff. It’s the future. Nonprofits are going to start looking at software differently: what are the features and what is the API like? Can I integrate with other systems? Can I power other web-based services with my data?

Thanks to N-TEN for convening the call and everyone who participated. I thought the back-channel chat worked very well. I look forward to future calls!

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 20th, 2006 at 3:35 pm and is filed under CRM, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “NTEN Open API Discussion”

  1. Chris Says:
    October 20th, 2006 at 8:44 pm

    Steve, it looks like you kept this post vendor-agnostic, and I know the Quickbooks is just one example, but it was wierd that I stumbled across this post only a few minutes after reading yours:

    http://blogs.salesforce.com/dreamforce06/2006/09/integrating_sal.html

    Interesting overlap of topics?

  2. Katrin Says:
    October 23rd, 2006 at 3:39 pm

    Steve – thanks for this. I guess we were not entirely clear in our billing that we are indeed talking about webservices APIs connceting tools. But that is precisely what that was about… and the call was to indicate that vendors indeed need to listen to what customers want. The biggest shared pain across nonprofits is the data silos that everyone maintains at great cost of time and money. So, thanks for clarifying this so eloquently. Should have had you involved in the planning of this :-) Incidentally, I just talked to the folks at the Institute for Money in State Politics and they are – yep, opening up their APIs.. to “give outside Web-site developers the ability to access and display the Institute’s data on their own Web sites, to program fully interactive displays using Institute data within their Web pages, and to create applications that return live data from http://www.followthemoney.org”

    What goes for the vendor goed for the nonprofit keepers of valuable data (and databases) just as much…

    Thanks again, Steve, for all the great work that you do. You are a fabulous leader in the community!

    Katrin

  3. Steve Says:
    October 23rd, 2006 at 4:22 pm

    Thanks Katrin, you flatter…

    Great call. Thanks for hosting it–I know the work that goes into such things! Data access via an API is really cool when it’s your own high-value data and it’s really cool when it’s someone else’s high-value data. Just taking data from print to an API accessible form can really blow the doors off…

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