What Retailers, Coops and Producers Should Know about This Data Integration Tool
What Every Agribusiness Needs to Know To Integrate New Data
You just signed up a new customer for your digital platform. They want to integrate your agronomic and geospatial data to create new digital applications for their customers. They have an internal team of developers who need to connect to your API ( Application Programming Interface) to import and integrate your data files.
Two issues repeatedly come up in situations like this: customers without the expertise to understand that APIs don’t magically connect themselves, and enterprise level customers who do and say, “I need a custom solution. Can you map the workflow and convert this data for our applications?”
The cost of connecting a customer
Some digital ag companies are using their own developers to help less digitally advanced customers connect, for a faster return on their investment. That’s an expensive “value add”, even when customers are charged for the service. The direct cost of a developer’s time does not reflect the bigger opportunity cost of taking them off high priority digital projects.
To succeed against competitors, management theory suggests a business focus on your core competencies. Perhaps it’s time to think about handing off custom software integrations to a partner whose core focus is on connecting that “last mile” between APIs to ensure data integrity.
Sorry, but APIs are not plug and play
APIs are the digital pipelines that deliver ag data from one application to another, but it’s a myth that they are plug and play. Someone has to know how to turn on the faucet to get data out and displayed the right way. Automated solutions work for simple integrations, but they cannot think for themselves and thus, cannot resolve discrepancies in complex data integrations. And in agribusiness, data is a gordian knot of complexity.
For example, when data is passed from one API to another, moved upstream or downstream, integrated with huge data sets from other APIs, someone has to interpret the data from one API to another. What if it is not in the format your API requires or the other program requires? What if the coordinates are inconsistent? A difference of one foot in remote sensing data can mean your entire data set is wrong, costing time and money to fix.
The need for custom code multiplies with each new source of data.
The more data sources added, the greater the need for APIs at each juncture creating a greater integration challenge. MyJohnDeere, for example, is an ecosystem of APIs that enables customers to access data, share files, and develop apps – if you know the lay of the digital ag land. There is a long inventory and catalogue of APIs and tutorials to learn how to connect and use them.
As the diagram below shows, each data juncture needs an API to hand off data, and each new data set brings its own unique concerns at the business logic level (can a user belong to multiple organizations, or just one?), authorization level (who is allowed to see this data?) and technical level (is this boundary in WKT or Geojson?). At first glance, everything may look perfectly aligned, but even experienced architects can be surprised by hidden concerns that trip up the integration – such as discovering that your database of fields has overlapping geometry, but the system you are integrating flat out rejects overlaps.
The Salesforce integration saga
If you’re at all familiar with Salesforce, you can understand why there are technology consulting firms whose sole business is Salesforce integrations. One company spent tens of thousands of dollars when its developers didn’t realize there are limits to the number of requests you can ask Salesforce to perform, and limits on the length of time a function can run. When we inherited this problem, it became clear that we would have to rearchitect the whole way the application flowed. The client had to spend the money to do it all over again because they did not know to bring developers in during the design process and did not understand how the constraints of the API they wanted to connect to could reshape their entire implementation.
Aren’t APIs supposed to solve integration problems?
There are thousands of public, open source and industry-specific APIs that do almost everything – emphasis on almost. Your APIs are built for compatibility with your system, but the same applies in reverse. Your customers, partners and suppliers have APIs built for their systems. Someone has to join the digital pipes to connect that “last mile”.
Many farm organizations, such as co-ops, just recently began developing their own digital tools and offerings. Many, for example, are creating web portals for growers to enable them to exchange information and gain more value from membership.
Few technologies are as critical to agriculture as APIs.
APIs are the powerhouse of agribusiness, the technical conduit for the data that is generating better crop yields and farm efficiencies. Over years of working in precision agriculture, we have learned what is required to build, test, and connect APIs to protect data integrity and security as it moves from one system to the next. Companies that have not yet reached digital maturity may not be prepared for the time and costs involved, and should they be? It is not their core capability.
Skyward’s team of software architects, engineers and project managers do this every day. It is our core capability. We cut our teeth in precision ag and have partnered with agribusiness companies for more than a decade. By scaling your digital capabilities, we enable you to do the same for your customers. Think of us as an extension of your digital team.
Skyward Apps helps agribusiness enterprises build their digital capacity and front runner advantage. We create exceptional software, make technologies work together, and facilitate coordination across dispersed engineering teams to expedite delivery of large digital projects. For more information on our clients and experience, see our case studies, read our blog on The Digital Frontlines or ask us for a consultation.