The Background
Terazo partnered with a logistics company and its internal teams to conduct a strategic review of the business’s needs and recommend an API management system. We then implemented a scalable, repeatable solution that allowed the client and their partners to modernize the shipping process that provided real-time insights on demand.
The Challenge
A large, full-service freight transportation company enlisted the help of the Terazo team to help modernize and improve their shipping systems to provide real-time visibility and responsiveness for large-scale customers. The company had historically relied on EDI transactions to share data with their supply chain. However, many partners wanted the company to modernize interactions via REST APIs to support their need for real-time visibility and responsiveness.
Our Approach
A thorough, technology-agnostic assessment was conducted, leading to the selection of RedHat’s 3scale API management platform to realize a successful outcome. Terazo supported the implementation of 3Scale, then worked with the company to develop an “MVP” API experience for Shipment Tracking with one of the nation’s largest retailers as the first “developer customer” partner.
Before writing a single line of code, Terazo used the Open API Specification and Swagger tooling to create “design first” or “contract first” API specifications to validate that the same data, if not more, could be provided relative to the EDI integration pattern. The Open API Specification also served as developer documentation that could be shared with the company’s partners to help them understand the APIs quickly and thoroughly.
Once the API was developed, we onboarded the customer’s client development team to the 3scale platform through which it was published. They were able to have a “self-service” experience — logging into the developer portal, getting access to the API, and testing successfully in their own development environment — within one business day.
Technologies & Services Utilized
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Strategic Consulting
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API Development
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Technical Writing
The Results
Establishing APIs allowed the company to enable real-time access to critical data that retailers and third-party logistics partners needed to quickly respond to issues, make accurate projections about shipment quantities, statuses and locations, and improved efficiency by removing the time it took to manually request orders and updates. Publishing the REST APIs also decreased internal development time for partner integration, allowing key retailers to engage the company’s IT team in higher value conversations about overall system and data quality improvements.
Confident that the solution could serve the needs of their large retail partners, the client worked with Terazo to develop additional API capabilities for deeper integration between their systems and those of their partners.
