Introducing Ready-to-Wear to the Internet
Blog: Software AG Blog - Reality Check
Buying fashionable clothing online used to be a chore, with few choices and difficult return procedures. That is changing rapidly as the fashion industry becomes increasingly connected; offering not just clothing but also shoes and home goods online—and making returns simple.
A great example of this is fashion retailer Kiabi, with a strong online presence servicing 20 million customers across 32 countries and over 500 stores. Kiabi has implemented a cross-channel strategy using an application programming interface (API) strategy, choosing Software AG’s webMethods API Management capability.
The secret to being able to deliver a superior, scalable customer experience is in using APIs to extend a retailer’s digital ecosystem. In this way retailers can expose core business functions, in real-time, to business partners and across all departments in the company.
Jean-Francois Rompais, IT & Architecture Leader at Kiabi, said that Kiabi’s API Management programme has been a core enabler of its cross-channel strategy. “As we have added sales channels, each of which has required access to similar data and processes, our library of APIs has enabled us to do this faster and with greater consistency – thus improving speed to market and quality of service.”
Kiabi designed crucial API building blocks for composing applications, ensuring it can deal with the rapidly changing demands of the fashion business. This enables Kiabi to scale its systems and online presence up—or down—rapidly depending on customer demand.
The API ecosystem at Kiabi empowers both internal and external parties to deliver rich and engaging experiences for their customers. This, in turn, drives innovation far beyond the scope of the company’s current online platform—all while accelerating time to market.
If you are thinking about creating an API ecosystem, your developer community and B2B partners will need an API portal to discover and adopt your APIs. webMethods API Cloud is Software AG’s new cloud-hosted API portal that helps you promote the discovery and testing of your APIs, manage the developer on-boarding process, and analyze the usage. API Cloud is part of webMethods API Management, a key component of Software AG’s Digital Business Platform.
API Management offers:
- A service-based API portal for publishing and promoting your APIs
- REST and SOAP support
- Integrated API testing
- Built-in usage analytics
At Software AG’s Innovation World 2015 you can see webMethods API Management for yourself. See you there!
The post Introducing Ready-to-Wear to the Internet appeared first on Reality Check.
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