Harmonizing Services for Faster Client On-boarding with WSO2 API Cloud
Customer Profile
EC Group is a world-class fulfilment and delivery solutions provider that operates one of the largest response handling facilities in the UK. They provide flexible and comprehensive warehousing, packing, mailing, and distribution solutions for retail-focused businesses.
Spida Solutions, a WSO2 Partner, is an innovative information technology group with a passion for the opportunities presented by the convergence of service and component-based architectures. They strive to provide clients with a common sense approach to software development.
PROJECT
Crucial to EC Group’s business is their platform, which provides their clients with a range of functionality including tracking, managing, and reporting of orders. EC Group spent a significant amount of time supporting new clients during the on-boarding process because of the multiple services they needed to understand and integrate with. They identified the need to streamline the interfaces offered by the platform as a crucial requirement to support their growing client base. EC Group was looking for a self-service offering which allows their clients to integrate with their platform easily, with minimal support. EC Group approached Spida Solutions to explore the possibility of using WSO2 API Cloud.
REQUIREMENT
- Provide self-service sign up for clients through a customizable API store, which includes self-service key generation for OAuth authentication
- Allow harmonization of existing services into a single consistent API design
- Allow publication of self-serve documentation to aid clients’ adoption and use of APIs
- Be cloud-based without on-site infrastructure
- Transformation of all existing SOAP/XML services to be published as REST/JSON APIs
SOLUTION
- EC Group, working together with WSO2 Partner Spida Solutions, concluded that WSO2 API Cloud was a good fit for their requirements.
- Spida Solutions managed the design of APIs, API Store customization and the publication of APIs.
- WSO2 API Cloud was used to allow backend services on disparate domains to be harmonized into a single API.
- It was also used for access control, managing throughput, facilitating rapid addition of new resources, and analytics on API usage among other things.
- By working closely with WSO2, EC Group and Spida Solutions were able to further improve the existing WSO2 offering including:
- Refinement of WSO2 email marketing when custom roles are in use
- Ability to fully customize API consumer on-boarding email, delivering guidance and documentation prior to signing up
- Ability to fully control the visibility of all API versions
EC Group can now quickly and easily integrate with their clients with no additional infrastructure costs. The new single, consistent, and harmonized API design drastically lowered their clients’ learning curve and support effort from EC Group. Having the ability to onboard clients through a single explanatory email has reduced the volume of client calls during the on-boarding process.
“The symbiosis of our relationship with WSO2 really helped us provide a good experience for EC Group and made the project a success. The WSO2 support and engineering teams have been very helpful in advising us on best practices when implementing certain features, and they were open to hearing and acting on any customer feedback.” - Alan Tucker, Director, Spida Solutions
EC Group is digitally disrupting its industry with WSO2. Are you?
