“My days are constantly filled with boring work that must be done and no one else can or will do it. I’m frustrated because it takes me away from actually working on my business.” Sound familiar? If so, you need API integration and automation in your life.
When I recognize this thought process, I ask myself one simple question: “Is what you’re doing repeatable without any human emotion?” If your answer is “yes”, then you’re in luck.
You just found a task you can automate!
In its simplest form, automation is having a computer do something the same way every time on a given schedule or based on a specific “triggering action”. API Integration is the process of connecting 2 separate business tools together to do something productive.
An API automation is a combination of automating a task that needs to be completed between 2 or more systems at a time. Sounds complex but there are some great tools out there to make this process a bit easier to swallow.
Let’s discuss a few real world scenarios where this is possible so you can see where to implement it in your business.
Use API Automation To Fast-Track Invoicing
Let’s say you bill your clients based on projects throughout the month and you send them reports on the 1st.
Normally, this would take Sue a few hours to complete the various tasks, check their status, and calculate the next payment. Next, she looks over any manual service orders to see if any one-off invoices need to be sent.
Once she has a handle on all the various clients and projects, she then has to log into Quickbooks Online and create the invoices by hand – inputting job numbers, line items, number of hours and the line item price…
Finally, she has to click the “send email to client” button to actually send the Quickbooks powered email.
Whew.
You know Sue hates the 1st of the month because not only does she have this responsibility, she also needs to look over hours to ensure they are all accurate, prepare all receipts so she can close the books, and finally she has to think about reconciliation.
Sue has a lot on her mind.
This is the perfect situation to automate – there’s no human emotion needed for this job! So, let’s automate it.
On the first of each month, your system automatically reviews open projects, invoices milestones in QuickBooks, and pulls job data for line items. Then, instead of a generic QuickBooks email, it sends a beautifully branded, customized message (because your clients deserve the best.) Fancy? Absolutely. Necessary? 100%.
This process would take a computer about 10 minutes to process and send for hundreds of clients. What Sue used to spend hours on she can now accomplish before picking up her Caramel Macchiato from Starbucks on the way to work.
Combine Marketing And Sales Seamlessly
Another instance you can utilize automation for is syncing your email marketing system (ActiveCampaign) and your Sales CRM (Hubspot) so that contacts are always kept up to date between marketing and sales. This can be set up between any two platforms you use.
Example: When a lead comes in from your website, your sales team gets a Slack alert, you get a personal Slack update, and your sales manager gets a text. The lead is logged in HubSpot with a “follow-up” task, added to your email marketing, and queued for the next rep—all while you’re out closing your next deal.
I know, this is probably making you feel a couple of things. “It’s too good to be true” and “I have no idea how to even begin to set this up!”
Don’t worry, this is where online API tools come into play.
No Code API Integration Tools
While there are situations where a development team is a necessary step to automating API level integration tasks, there are also a few “no-code” solutions out there that work incredibly well.
We have a stellar development team but even we use no-code solutions where they make sense. Why spend 5 hours automating something that you could set up in Zapier in 10 minutes?
I personally love Zapier, but we’ve also used Make in the past. These tools make API integration and automation a lot simpler by handling all the complex integration with a few clicks. The intuitive graphic user interface makes it more approachable to create simple tasks.
What Are The True Benefits of API Integration?
The benefits of APIs are truly endless because they can be used for almost anything, however here are a few to get you thinking:
- Reducing manual tasks that are prone to human error
- Improving accuracy and data consistency
- Create extra time for you and your team to focus on true tasks that move the needle to generate revenue
- Speed up your operations
- Enhance your customer experience
Plus, one of my personal favorite things about automating tasks, you can scale your business without having to hire more support.
While we love supporting employees, we hire only when it’s necessary (either preparing for growth or keeping up with rapid expansion). By automating tasks, you keep cash in your business for marketing that drives real growth, so you hire for creativity, not busywork.
No Code API vs. Custom API
Now that we’ve established that API automation is what will help you take your business to the next level, let’s discuss where to go from here. You have 2 options – custom API integration and development or a no code solution.
No code API solutions are fantastic time savers for simple automation needs and small businesses. If there’s no need for data manipulation or “searching of data”, then a no-code solution is great. All the examples above are perfect for a no-code solution.
The moment you have a more complex automation, that’s when you’ll need to call an experienced development team.
Let me give you an example…
For Sue’s hell-ish 1st of month invoicing task, let’s go deeper. Let’s say your monthly invoices involve providing the progress of the project so far, which is calculated based on data in your project management system.
That means you’ll have to find the project in your PROJECT management system that is tied to your project in your TIME management system, then you need to calculate how many hours you’ve provided for a given service type – because your invoices include a breakdown of what work was actually completed.
Even explaining it, it gets complex. That’s when you need a development team. They can tie data together in an intuitive clean way that just isn’t possible within a no code solution like Zapier.
The moment you need to loop through complex data (like tasks in a project management system to calculate completion or create line items based on that calculated data), you’ll want to hire a professional to build it because then there are truly no limits.
Custom API Is Ideal For Scaling Businesses
Custom API integration and automation is ideal for scaling businesses that are handling large data sets between multiple platforms and want a high level of security. If you need to perform any data updates or manipulation to the data based on data in another system you’ll want to grab an experienced developer.
API integrations are paid for once and then run indefinitely. With no code solutions, you have to pay per “task”. Let’s put it this way – if your Zapier Zap has 5 steps in it, then every time it runs, it will use 5 tasks up. Get 100 leads, that’s 500 tasks used up.
Even though no code is easier to set up than custom integrations, it can still be stressful. That’s why we’re here for you! We build what is needed for the given challenge. If a no code solution will work and take less time and expense to create, that’ll be our recommendation. And we’ll help you build it in the best way possible.
With any solution comes common pitfalls and challenges. Zapier does a great job protecting its customers by building great integrations that have security at the forefront of their integrations. Be careful when working with a developer for a custom solution.
You want to ensure that they know what they’re doing, have done plenty of integrations before, and implement security-first protocols.
🚨Important Tip: APIs are only as reliable as the company maintaining them. Major updates happen once every couple years, but minor and security updates roll out monthly. No-Code solutions are pretty great at keeping up with updates.
Common API Integration Mistakes to Avoid
A common pitfall with automation is that it all happens in the background. Good documentation is vital to successful automation because when they fail…they fail silently.
Inconsistent data can cause hidden issues in your business, like incorrect hours or missing payments, making it hard to pinpoint the cause. Now, I don’t want to scare you away from automation, but it’d be reckless of me to only highlight the pros without mentioning the cons.
If you work with a development team like ours, you’ll have confidence in your automations running correctly every time. We set up strong “guard rails” around them and are quick to spot any issues, implementing fixes instantly when something goes wrong.
Example of A Successful API Automation
There are so many cool and creative ways to use automation. Here is a perfect example our team is working on as I type this… For one of our franchise clients, we’re building an automation that calculates booking capacity on a daily basis for each of their 100+ locations.
The automation goes like this:
At 11am in the location’s timezone, if a location has 20% or more of booking capacity for tomorrow, then send a Push Notification to all mobile app users who have favorited this location within a 30 mile radius letting them know there’s the capacity to book that takes them directly into the app.
This automation will generate millions in added revenue.
Not A Developer? Partner With Our Team!
Ready to open up more of your time and have your team working on more creative revenue generating tasks? Reach out to my team!
We can help you figure out if a no-code tool or a custom API solution is best for you. We’d love to brainstorm how to generate more revenue for your business through creative and efficient API integration and automation.
Book a FREE consultation with Mintun Media to discuss your project and challenges.
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