Executive Briefing and Golf Event at TPC Michigan, Thursday, June 27, 2019. Dearborn, MI. We met with technology and business leaders of major Fortune 500 companies including leading automotive manufacturers for a roundtable discussion of the future of APIs and hybrid integration and the automotive industry.
Major thanks to Chris Kassa (ckassa at axway dot com), one of our automotive sales experts in North America, for being the main gracious host and organizer. We’re also grateful to Tim Barnett, North American Vice President of Supply Chain East and Chris McCauley (cmccauley at axway dot com) North American Vice President of API and HIP Sales for collaborating to help drive more customer conversations that focus on industry-centric digital transformation.
This Axway event marked the end of my world tour that started last fall spanning 10 countries. The goal of the tour was to do the following:
- Nurture empathy for the customer experience by listening to and seeking to understand the 40+ of our 11,000 customer companies
- Deliver and share knowledge at conferences, meetups, and workshops for the greater API community inside and outside of the “firewall”
APIs and hybrid integration
During our time at TPC, I shared my point of view of the future of both transportation and automotive design trends. I also referenced inspiration from past automotive ideas that creatively imagined the infrastructure, AI, ML, and digital assistants that are only available now in the modern present. To dial into how we deliver the futuristic view, we have to start researching, developing and testing these ideas—many companies globally have already been deeply involved for decades now. We walked through the rise of the connected ecosystem experience and the role of APIs and hybrid integration in reaching a more mature, adaptive architecture and safe, customer-centric solutions. Read about hybrid integration and what you need to know.
Consider this
The more modular transportation becomes available, the more our mobile tablets and devices along with our digital identities meld with our cars, the more shared ownership models move us along to hybrid public and private transport societies.
From this website, the third asset to the right, a video, shows the conceptual view of the driverless car chase from the movie Minority Report.
- Advanced predictive analytics
- Precision identity access management and bioinformatics
- Human and machine symbiosis
- Swarming and dynamic intelligence patterns modeled after the natural world: movement of fish, insects, and bees
Do you remember the TV show Knight Rider with K.I.T.T.?
Much of the functionality available in KITT was creatively imagined since much of the technology for digital assistants, machine learning, and artificial intelligence and processing power did not exist in the early 1980s. However, in the modern world, voice recognition and new security issues now exist especially with your identity more closely tied to your vehicle. One resolution is to design your APIs and hybrid integrations with security in mind to pre-emptively check and be prepared for new and unknown issues.
With predictive analytics, massive amounts of data and major processing power, the future includes more accurate weather reporting and no traffic.
I challenged automotive and digital device designers and implementation leaders to design for this kind of future that I’m describing with researchers and experts in neuroscience and the hidden patterns behind social interactions.
With predictive analytics that better shape the world towards no traffic or weather issues, how will we adapt our roadways, systems and cars?
Dialog with leaders of major technology and automotive companies and the associated lifecycle and supply chain revealed some interesting and thoughtful sound bites. What pain points are they experiencing on the ground and during planning?
Key Customer Experience CX touchpoints
- Consumer
- Dealership
- Maintenance
- Resell
And a more detailed consideration of the automotive experience
- Consumer
- Buying process which includes upgrades and trials
- Maintenance
- Reselling
- Dealership
- Advertisements
- Fleet management including transport
- Logistics – The evergreen ecosystem
How do APIs and hybrid integration power the spectrum of automotive experiences from mechanical to all technology digital packages?
Digitize the entire experience and lifecycle and build in touchpoints so people are comfortable to choose when they want to step in.
The patterns of urban cities and rural areas have different automotive needs.
Axway’s Senior Vice President and General Manager, Scott Torvik, explained several historical examples of enterprises pivoting from the linear customer journey as a thing of the past. However, in the case of consumer packaged goods, those touchpoints gave the industry insight into targeted purchasing intelligence that continues to evolve as the digital experience gives consumers choices changing buying behavior altogether.
One attendee advised that the buying behavior has made consumers so savvy that they are far beyond the technology delivery of car dealerships.
We continued to explore what the Customer expects versus what various parts of the automotive experience can deliver today. Savvy customers are researching and visiting dealerships less. Consumers research more to narrow down to decide their in-person experience. When they finally arrive in person, they do so solely to purchase. They have done their homework and decide whether or not they like the salesperson, but regardless they know what they want, what’s available, and have more control than the salesforce than ever before.
I continued to challenge the audience by questioning the balance of the human touch versus digital and how we accommodate five generations in the workplace. Not all consumers will thrive with digital experiences. One attendee advised the frustration of wanting to return a vehicle because the dashboard was so digital that the learning curve was exponentially higher than expected.
How do we achieve innovation?
Ford and Toyota were pioneers who revolutionized the car industry through agile and lean manufacturing processes focusing on standardization and quality. All products and processes whether physical or digital have been shaped by their contributions to technology. With these mature models in mind, we have to approach APIs with the same mentality.
When you combine Axway’s Accelerate Journeys with APIOps and APIOps Cycles methodology, that’s exactly how you achieve systematic, ongoing, specification driven, stakeholder-centric API offerings. For example, the OpenAPI OAS and AsyncAPI specifications sit at the core of your developer portal helping employees, customers, partners, and third parties get what they need to deliver unified experiences. The more holistic and mature the experience you deliver with your APIs that form and connect applications, platforms, and power your ecosystems, the higher your market position from a financial and branding standpoint.
How experience matters
Though the days of an API mandate are long over (referencing the Jeff Bezos idea that every employee must comply or be fired), many developers, architects and managers are still faced with innovation that happens through standardized APIs designed with agility, scale and growth in mind without having the expertise to do so.
I shared several case studies of how our customers such as BMW and SiriusXM are delivering 360 experiences on their platforms to deliver continuous value and extend their ecosystem.
Dialed in
Axway, Sopra Steria and our strong partnership relationships offer over 50 years of combined experience in guiding our customers to scale their local and global business models.
Start with where you are. Take the Digital Maturity and Hybrid Integration Maturity assessments. Share the links with your colleagues and compare your scores and results.