OK, let’s be honest – how long do your New Year’s resolutions usually last?
Are you out the door at 5 am on January 1 (fine, maybe January 2) for your new morning jogging regimen – only to decide on January 7or so that the health benefits of getting more sleep outweigh those of a morning run?
Do you buy out the health food section of the store every January – but then end up tossing most of it weeks later, once you realize you never really liked tofu after all, or conclude that carbs can’t possibly be all that bad?
So why do we keep making those resolutions, year after year, in spite of our recurrent willpower struggles?
It may be the champagne…but then again, it may be the fact that most resolutions are truly worthy goals that will bring positive changes in our lives long-term.
With that in mind, it stands to reason that taking some time to make a few New Year’s resolutions at your organization would be a useful exercise, as well (one that probably shouldn’t involve too much champagne, though…).
And bonus – with the combined willpower of everyone in your organization, along with the processes and structure that can be put in place to support those new resolutions, you’re a lot more likely to follow through and actually reach those goals.
So what kinds of resolutions should your organization be making?
Of course, everyone wants to boost profits, reduce costs, streamline processes, and improve outcomes. But starting with big, nebulous goals like that is a surefire way to get nowhere fast. Planning several concrete actions your organization will take in one specific area of business is a much more effective way to approach your New Year’s resolutions.
And what area of business is more all-encompassing – and has more of an influence on every other aspect of your organization – than data management?
Refining and updating your data management strategy – or putting one in place, if you don’t have an integrated, comprehensive one yet – is the single most beneficial thing you can do for your organization in 2019. From productivity to costs to growth, your data management plan affects every important goal your organization has.
Just like your own personal resolutions, the following 3 data management goals are all about making positive changes that lead to increased wellbeing long-term:
Get Organized (Create or Update Your Data Management Strategy)
First things first. Just as getting organized in your private life helps you reduce stress, prioritize what’s important, and get things done more efficiently and effectively, putting a data management strategy in place helps your organization do the same. Your plan should take into account current needs and resources, as well as expectations for the future, and should make every element of data management at your organization an integrated, intentional choice that supports the goals of the strategy as a whole.
Eat Healthier (Ensure Data Quality)
As the Coca-Cola Company reminds us, Put Good In, Get Good Out (which is a little ironic, but we’ll leave that alone for now). The principle is true, however – just like eating better gives us more energy and improves our health, ensuring data quality results in better organizational health, creating better outcomes for both your customers (or students, in the case of higher ed) and your bottom line. Eliminating duplicate records, for example, can mean more accurate and effective communication – which will ultimately result in growth.
Save Money (Streamline Data Management Processes)
Everybody wants to save more money – and just like cutting back and budgeting helps an individual take control of their finances, streamlining your data management processes makes a huge difference in productivity, costs, and efficiency for your organization. If you can easily automate a process, why waste resources doing it manually? Look into solutions that will allow you to streamline, and thus boost your bottom line.
Have we convinced you to make some data management resolutions at your organization?
Then let us give you one more pro tip.
You know what the single easiest way to hit all three of these goals is?
Partnering with N2N, and using our Illuminate API management platform and our IDMatch data quality assurance module to provide a comprehensive data management solution.
Using the Illuminate platform is a data management strategy in and of itself, giving your organization the agility to integrate, test, change out, and add in any apps, databases, and other systems you want, in minutes and without coding, now and in the future. And IDMatch ensures data quality, preventing duplicate records by streamlining the data review process.
With these tools in place, your organization will be poised to take on the new year like never before.
So what are you waiting for? Resolve to give N2N a call today. And after we chat? Then you can break out that champagne! It’s gonna be a great year.
Okay, okay, we know that title makes a pretty bold claim.
You may be saying to yourself, I don’t even know what an API is. My organization has gotten this far without messing around with API management, as far as I know – how on earth could it make or break us?
Or conversely, you might be thinking, hey, I don’t need to worry! My organization has a crack IT team that eats APIs for breakfast! We’ve got this.
But here’s the thing.
Tech is at a tipping point. Organizations that just keep on keeping on, doing the same old same old, aren’t going to be the organizations that survive the next few years, let alone pull ahead of the pack to become industry leaders.
2019 is the year to rethink your IT strategy, and put your organization in a position to evolve and grow along with tech, rather than being blindsided by it.
And a huge part of doing so lies in API management.
How?
Let’s take a look.
What is API Management?
First, we need to define some terms.
APIs are the little snippets of code that connect your organization’s apps, databases, and other programs so that they can communicate. They provide the pathways that allow you to automatically send data from an app to your database, for example, or vice versa.
API management gets into the way you create those connections – those APIs. Up until recently, most organizations have had to resort to custom coding – paying their IT teams, or outside programmers, to come in and spend weeks or even months writing custom code to connect each new app they want to add to every other app, database, and program they use. It’s an expensive, time-consuming, and inelegant process that results in a tangled web of connections that gets even more complex every time an addition is made.
However. As we said before, tech is at a tipping point. New apps and new devices are being developed every day. And some of those innovations will soon become necessary tools for your organization, just like the internet, the cloud, and mobile apps did.
Do you really want to have to spend huge amounts of time and money on coding every single time you need to use a new tool, only to add even more layers of complexity to an already unwieldy conglomeration of connections?
How Can API Management Make or Break My Organization?
So now we get to the big question. If you handle API management the old-fashioned way, you’ll be losing money, losing time – and losing your place in your industry to other organizations that are already prepared for the future.
But if you put one simple API management tool in place today, you can simplify the tangle, cut costs, and make adding new apps a snap.
N2N’s Illuminate is an API management platform that allows even laymen to create APIs in minutes, no coding necessary. It connects all your organization’s apps, databases, and programs in a simple, elegant way, allowing seamless data transfer without the hassle of individually connecting each one manually. It enables organizations to quickly and easily add new apps without having to hire programmers or eat up all their IT team’s valuable time.
Being agile enough to adapt quickly, no matter what tech the future holds, is the key to success in 2019 and beyond. And API management is the key to that agility.
People in the world of IT toss around a lot of jargon that the uninitiated don’t always understand.
For example, most people have at least heard the term ‘API’ at some point, right?
But when it comes to understanding what APIs are, or what they do, that’s a different story.
And even if you do get APIs – what the heck is an API management platform? And why would you need something like that for your organization? It sounds extremely technical – intimidating, even.
Well, we’re here to tell you that it’s not.
Seriously.
In fact, at N2N, we’re all about making APIs simple for our customers. Let me explain.
So, first of all, APIs are basically just little connectors. If your organization’s databases and systems were a giant multi-cage hamster compound with those crazy tube passageways between each section, and your data was the hamster, then APIs would be the tubes connecting each section. They allow the hamster to run from one to the other – or, data to be communicated between 2 apps or databases or other programs.
In an organization, though, you don’t just need a single pathway through your hamster cage.
You need that main cage – your primary database – to be connected to every smaller section of the cage compound – your other apps – directly. And you also need each smaller cage to be connected to every other smaller cage directly. That hamster needs to be able to run directly from the main cage into his bedroom, or from the main cage into his playroom…or from his bedroom to his bathroom, or from his bedroom into his dining room – all rooms need that direct connection. That’s a lot of tubes, right?
1 – This is where API management platforms come into play.
You’ve got two choices for your hamster.
You can either pay an artisan hamster cage maker to custom create new tubes for you, each time you decide to add a new room to the compound, connecting that new room with every other room in the cage. It takes him weeks each time, and costs a fortune – but nothing’s too good for Hammy, right?
Or, you can buy a hamster cage tube kit that’s been created with future expansion in mind, and has pre-built components that makes it super simple to snap in a couple new tubes yourself, whenever there’s a new addition.
Can you guess which one is the API management platform?
Custom coding APIs is crazy expensive and crazy time-consuming. Our API management platform, Illuminate, has pre-built API building blocks that anyone can snap together in minutes to connect all their apps and systems – and it leaves the future wide open for easy additions.
2 – So why do you need an API management platform?
Well, if you want your organization to grow, you’re going to be handling more and more hamsters as time goes on…and that means more cages, and more tubes.
The more tubes and cages you have to have directly connected with each other, the more expensive – and convoluted and precarious – your cage set-up is going to be.
You may also want to try out new cage configurations in the future, adding innovative new rooms to improve little ol’ Hammy’s quality of life – but are you really willing to shell out the big bucks for that artisan hamster cage maker to build you the connections those new rooms will necessitate, only to discover a few weeks later that Hammy doesn’t like those new rooms after all?
An API Management Platform like Illuminate gives your organization the agility to freely scale, adapt, and experiment as needed, because it makes API creation – and thus, integration – quick, easy, and affordable.
Simple enough?
So if you want a happy hamster, call N2N today for more information or a free demo.
Does your organization have a love-hate relationship with data?
On the one hand, data makes the world go ‘round. It’s what enables organizations to do their thing…to grow…to improve. It guides decisions and shapes strategies. It illuminates the past and informs the future. It’s vital to literally every aspect of business and higher education today.
On the other hand…there’s so much of it! It’s overwhelming. Confusing. Sometimes contradictory. It makes for tons of extra work, and creates tech and procedural headaches left and right.
So what’s the best way to handle this crucial but frustrating resource?
With 2019 right around the corner, it’s time to take a new approach to data management.
Addressing data management piecemeal, or waiting to make changes till problems arise, just isn’t going to cut it anymore. You think we’ve got a lot of data to deal with now? Just wait till we hit the 2020s! 2019 is the perfect time to proactively get all your data ducks in a row, so you’re ready for whatever the new decade brings. So let’s take a look at the 3 steps that will stand you in good stead for the future.
1 – Create a data management strategy.
This first step is vital. Take a step back from the details that are so easy to get lost in, and look at the big picture. You need an overarching data management strategy. From collection to integration to quality assurance to distribution to storage to security…every single aspect of your data management procedures should be intentional and aligned with a single strategy in mind. Leave room for the future in your strategy as well – make sure your plan includes some agility for incorporating any new data feeds or new tech that may become important tools a few years from now.
2 – Automate data integration.
Does every single one of your apps and programs automatically communicate and share data with each of the others? Or are you stuck cross-referencing data manually, or looking things up in one system to manually add to another? With new data constantly coming at us in such large quantities, it’s simply becoming impossible to keep up without an automated integration solution.
N2N’s Illuminate platform gives you a simple, elegant way to integrate all your data feeds and systems in minutes, without any coding. And as a bonus, it leaves room for the future as well, making it quick and easy to add new apps to the mix anytime.
3 – Ensure data quality.
How do you know that typos or other confusion during data collection aren’t creating duplicate records or other issues with data quality? Without human eyes on that data to check, you can’t be sure. But who has the resources to handle all of that manually?
N2N’s IDMatch, an add-on module for the Illuminate platform, automates the time-consuming parts of data quality assurance, and then gives users the ability to quickly review potentially problematic records manually using an intuitive interface. Saving time and boosting accuracy in one fell swoop!
So if you’ve got a love-hate thing going on with data, and you’re worried about what 2019 and beyond will bring –call N2N today. We can get you set up with solutions that will get your organization future-ready, and change your relationship with data forever.
Well, it’s time to just come right out and admit it.
And honestly, we’re proud of it.
Here at N2N, we really are a bunch of nerds.
But not just any nerds. We’re technology integration nerds – passionate to the point of obsession about the latest and greatest in integration technology.
We’re technology integration evangelists.
So when people ask us what all the buzz about technology integration is, we’re more than happy to explain.
It’s an unfamiliar concept to many, and it’s a side of tech that’s not as flashy as the latest AI development or VR use case…but it’s something that can totally rock your world once you get it.
At N2N, we’ve created a one-of-a-kind API Management Platform, called Illuminate, that enables users to integrate their organization’s apps, systems, databases, and programs easily and quickly, without any coding involved.
Plenty of people don’t even realize they need something like this, and don’t see how it could make a difference in their businesses. Many don’t quite understand what it is or how it works, and figure it’s probably just way too complex to mess with. And some just don’t see how it would fit into their current business ecosystem, or assume it must be prohibitively expensive.
That’s fine – in fact, that’s great! Because we here at N2N love nothing more than educating people about technology integration, and sharing our passion and excitement for this admittedly very nerdy niche.
So let’s go through and address each of these objections or stumbling blocks to technology integration. We promise – after a few minutes, our excitement will be contagious.
1 – What is an API Management Platform, and how does it work?
First of all, let’s talk about APIs. An API is sort of like the translation device in your favorite science fiction series – hook two different programs up together with an API, and suddenly, they can communicate!
An API Management Platform is a program that enables people to build their own customized APIs to connect all of their unique systems, databases, and apps to each other, so they can all communicate with each other.
Usually, it takes programmers weeks to write custom code to create APIs. But the cool thing about our Illuminate platform is that we’ve created a set of API building blocks that can be snapped together literally in minutes by a layman to fit any technology integration need. And we even developed a wizard to guide you through the whole process.
Illuminate is pretty much the opposite of complex – it’s a simple, elegant tool for simplifying technology integration at your organization.
2 – Why do I need an API Management Platform, and how can it help my business?
Ah, this is the million dollar question! Integration equals efficiency, productivity, accuracy. Integration saves time and money, and frees up resources. If you’ve got anyone on your team doing any kind of manual data entry, or having to cross-reference data from different databases, you’ll benefit from the technology integration that an API Management Platform makes possible.
Of course, you could just hire an expensive team of developers to custom code those APIs for you over the next month or so…or you could do it yourself in a few minutes, and save your business the time, money, and hassle.
An API Management Platform also prepares your business for the future. By making the integration of new apps into your systems simple and quick, it gives you the freedom you to try out new programs and take advantage of innovations – in other words, it creates radical agility.
3 – How can I fit an API Management Platform affordably into my current business ecosystem?
With Illuminate, you don’t even have to worry about the initial set-up – because it’s got the amazing customer service of N2N behind it. We can handle every aspect of the set-up for you, and make sure you’re over-the-top happy with everything before we leave you to it. And even then, we haven’t really left – you can always give us a call and we’ll be more than happy to help with any questions.
As for price? We’ve got your back. We have different tiers of pricing based on usage, so there’s a level for your business, no matter where you are right now. And every one of those tiers is less expensive than hiring those programmers, or even asking your own IT team to dedicate all those weeks to coding APIs from scratch.
So, what’s holding you back when it comes to technology integration? API Management Platforms are truly simple, straightforward tools that can not only save your business money – they provide you with the flexibility to take advantage of the new opportunities waiting just ahead.Contact N2N today for more information.
Which factors did you consider when buying your current car?
How about your phone, or any other tech gadget you recently purchased?
Or maybe even a major appliance, like a washer, dryer, or refrigerator?
You probably thought about the trustworthiness of the brand…its reputation for quality products and great customer service…and whether it’s received any recognition in the form of awards or publicity, right?
And then of course, you considered the product itself. Did it have all the features you needed? Were there any benefits to this product over and above other, similar products out there? And how did the cost fit into your budget?
So right now, you’re looking for a solution that will help your institution easily integrate student data feeds with your SIS – and ensure that no duplicate records are created in the process.
And you’re posing the same questions. Which company is the best choice? Which product will meet our needs, and then some? And which solution will fit our budget?
At N2N, we know there are other companies that offer solutions similar to ours. But we also know that, when you take a look at our company and our products, you’ll find that N2N, Illuminate, and IDMatch are head and shoulders above the rest. Here’s why.
The IDMatch edge? A focus on automation.
At N2N, we know that the whole purpose of implementing a solution like IDMatch is to free up your institution’s resources for more important matters than manually managing data. That’s why our focus is on automating the process of scanning for duplicates and integrating data.
Other solutions may give you a little more flexibility on the user end – for example, the ability to manipulate incoming data. We’re more interested in the back-end details, getting your customized set-up right so that you don’t have to manipulate that data, and instead, can trust IDMatch to catch duplicates and then send them your way for a quick check before integration.
Are you willing to trade speed and accuracy for a little more flexibility? We’re not.
The Illuminate edge? A focus on integration.
IDMatch doesn’t stand alone. It’s an add-on module to ouraward-winning API Management Platform, Illuminate. And once again, our focus here is on creating the most elegant solution possible to the problem of integrating disparate systems and apps.
Manually integrating your SIS with every new app your institution decides to use is a waste of resources, plain and simple. Illuminate allows you to fully integrate each program and app you use with all your other programs and apps in minutes, without complex coding.
We’re not some huge corporation. We’re a startup. Amultiple award-winning, hundreds of customers-serving startup, but a startup nonetheless. We still hustle. We still care. And what we care about most is surprising our customers with just how far we’ll go to make them over-the-top ecstatic about our products and service.
We work closely with our clients to ensure our products do exactly what they need them to do. We gladly help with any special requests or questions. In fact, more often than not, our client-vendor relationships end up turning into real friendships.
And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
So if you’re looking for a solution that will suit your unique data management needs, accomplish what you need it to, and then some, and provide you with customer service like you wouldn’t believe,give N2N a call today. We can’t wait to meet you.
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