Companies are facing extraordinary pressure when it comes to finding and retaining top talent. In February of this year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that nearly 4.3 million peopleOpens a new window had quit their jobs. The labor market has become very much employee-driven, and individuals are looking beyond “office perks†to flexibility, work-life balance, remote work options, and overall better ways to get a job done.  Â
For this reason, as the workforce undergoes massive restructuring, leaders are facing increased pressures to fill operational gaps and have become heavily focused on investing in innovative technologies that can ease day-to-day hurdles. Application programming interfaces (APIs), which enable software components to communicate well with each other, for example, are becoming a critical mechanism for combatting labor shortages. This is because they help organizations build fast and efficient automated workflows that reduce administrative oversight and let employees focus their time on more essential and high-level functions. As it stands today, APIs can eliminate the urgent need for more employees while improving morale and also enhancing retention rates.Â
To truly illustrate how this technology can revolutionize workflows, let us cover the basics and jump into what APIs are, the technical purpose they serve, and how companies can take full advantage. Â
APIs at WorkÂ
Simply put, and as previously mentioned, APIs serve as an intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. They are crucial for making the modern digital world go round and are the glue that holds most software together. Most importantly, and in relation to their ability to ease day-to-day administrative obstacles, APIs give businesses the power to make data more structured, accessible, and accurate. Thanks to deep learning capabilities, they can also enable automation, further easing up daily, manually intensive tasks.Â
Take, for example, document data extraction and the process of transforming those documents into actionable digital data. Although it is 2022 and a lot of what we do is virtual in nature, you might be surprised to hear that there are 2.5 trillion PDF documents Opens a new window (usually filed as scanned documents, receipts, and even images) in the world, according to Adobe’s VP Engineering for Document Cloud, Phil Ydens — and companies continue to struggle with extracting its contents correctly and proficiently. For employees, being tasked with manual data entry can be a very time-consuming task, which is a problem considering that slow extraction processes are not a match for our current digital-driven world — not to mention deteriorating to the capacities of good talent. In addition, on the business side, this is not only a waste of resources, but the process leads to an increased chance of human error and poor-quality data.Â
Solving an issue as mundane as data entry by automating data extraction from documents is one of the first steps toward easing an employee’s day. And instead of exposing hard-working talent to manual-intensive work, companies can give them the time back to focus on duties strategic to the business. This is the path with APIs in many other instances, from building service applications to easing up transactions for customers. Once this technology is employed, organizations can build a fast and efficient workflow that operates smoothly, decreasing the urgent need for talent wasted in admin work.Â
The Power of Machine LearningÂ
Extracting the right information from documents is not an easy task, given that documents can vary greatly from each other. Even if they hold the same type of information, they may not display them in the same fashion. Take for example, receipts, which all contain specific items (e.g., price, taxes, items, date, store name, etc.) Yet, the actual data in a receipt varies greatly from purchase to purchase. For example, the date can be written in U.S. format as 05/26/2022 (MM/DD/YYYY) or in non-American format starting with the day first, 26/05/2022 (DD/MM/YYYY), or may even be written textually, as May Fifth 2022 (MMM DDD YYYY). Not to mention that different vendors use different fonts and that many documents include handwritten information.
To translate different information into usable data and ensure proper data analysis, we must turn to machine learning and computer vision, both of which can be easily adopted by integrating APIs solutions. Â
See More: Future of Work: Why Businesses Should Focus On a Flexible Work Model
How To Get Started With API Adoption Â
As we have witnessed, API adoption is crucial for organizations looking to become a match for our current digital-driven world. The first step for companies looking to adopt such technology is understanding where APIs can have the greatest impact and the key pain points they need to resolve.Â
Once these opportunities/challenges are revealed, selecting the type of API solution that works best for the organization should follow, whether building an API from scratch or selecting a third-party API to ease the integration with other systems or applications. Each brings its benefits — for example, to solve the document data extraction problem, off-the-shelf APIs are trained using hundreds of thousands of documents to provide users with the most robust and accurate parsing solution. While creating a net-new document, parsing API can be more geared toward specific needs. However, creating a net-new solution is a lot more complex and time-consuming as it requires a certain level of expertise to use and define the right algorithm for each occasion and how to best manage the data at hand.Â
For this reason, adopting tools already in existence may be the easier path for busy enterprise leaders looking for a faster and more robust implementation. Either way, once a solution is implemented, employees can be empowered to focus their efforts on more essential duties that meet organizational impact and growth goals.
The Future of Work: Powered by Advanced Technologies Â
Times are changing, and organizations need to be ready for rapid adoption and execution of the technology that will set them up for success as they dive straight into digital transformation. From a business perspective, APIs are a key source of agility and bring vast benefits to operations. Amid the Great Resignation, well-implemented APIs have become a tool for easing many hurdles. Advanced APIs help address the labor shortage challenge and organizations’ demand to scale rapidly, directly impacting and improving recruitment, hiring, and retention.Â
How has API investment helped combat labor shortages in your organization? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .