Transforming an Industry Leader with APIs

After enjoying years of accelerated customer and product expansion, in 2008, the company identified not only a profound shift in customer engagement as a result of emerging technologies and changing culture, but also an alarming halt in growth and innovation within the company. Slow-moving IT and a disconnected architecture bottlenecked new ideas, preventing new features and products from coming to market at reasonable speed, if at all. Without innovating and responding to customer demands at the speed of technology change, the company could not maintain its market stronghold over the long-term. This software provider decided to focus on continuous innovation, rapid testing of new concepts, and delivering delightful experiences to customers. But delivering on this vision required a major shift in IT. They needed to turn their IT capabilities into an innovation platform, and that required service enabling and connecting all of their applications and data sources, then API-enabling those services for rapid access by internal consumers, partners, and even third party developers. It also required a restructuring of the development organization into small teams that would execute rapid releases in agile sprints.

This Fortune 1000 financial software provider delivers business and financial management solutions to a global customer base of 60 million small businesses, accounting professionals and consumers. The company’s national reach is so wide, that its solutions crunch and/or distribute 20% of the United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP). On a global scale, the company’s solutions are integrated to 19,000, or 40% of, the world’s banks. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, CA, USA and has 8,500 employees. It generates an annual revenue of $4.2 billion.