Pros and Cons of APIs, and What Makes Partstat API Different

In the last decade, the evolution of ecommerce as it relates to electronic components sourcing has been nothing short of incredible. Despite the highly advanced nature of the inventory OEMs buy, store, and use to assemble their products, the actual process of procuring them through inquiries, quoting, and games of back-and-forth phone tag has largely remained unchanged. All of the available innovation, it seems, has been concentrated on the consumer-facing market — leaving the supply chain that makes such markets possible left struggling to maintain production levels that, 30 years ago, seemed unfathomable.

It’s only recently that electronic inventory sourcing has begun to see the benefits of ecommerce data-sharing technologies incorporated into daily processes – most of these taking the form of APIs (application programming interfaces). Most commonly offered by component distributors and other such suppliers as a new way to serve customers, they grant OEMs direct access to real-time, up-to-date data including inventory pricing and inventory quantities without the need to pick up the phone or perform any extended online research. It’s a new business-to-business model that all but bypasses typical bottleneck inefficiencies.

“My gut feel is that 2019 will be a tipping point [for APIs],” says Electronics Sourcing editor John Barrett. “What this means, theoretically, is that every step in the component supply chain from pasting a component’s footprint on the CAD PCB to programming the pick and place machine, becomes a single, seamless process.”

But for all of the benefits an API can offer the modern supply chain, they are only as useful as the available data allows them to be. In their pursuit of efficiency, APIs also have the unintended consequence of narrowing the buyer’s field of vision. An API from a single distributor, for example, will allow the OEM to quickly price and order available inventory, but only from the distributor in question. If the OEM wishes to establish an overhead view of the state of the market (a valuable perspective that can help determine a component’s fair market price), it will have to either resort to the classic model of requesting quotes from dozens of additional suppliers outside the API’s scope, or invest in new APIs altogether — a solution that, in itself, defeats the purpose of adopting an API in the first place.

What makes Partstat API unique in the electronic component market is that it is not built around the data provided from a single supplier. Instead, our API is built on over 50 billion Big Data points collected from over 5,000 manufacturers and authorized distributors such as Digi-Key, Avnet, Arrow, TTI, and Mouser — the same Big Data that has made the world’s largest free electronic component search engine and marketplace. With a single search, users receive not just valuable product information including unique URLs, data sheets, product descriptions and specs, and packaging protocols, but also week-by-week aggregate details on part availability, pricing, and lead times that stretch across the entire global marketplace. Rather than narrowing their field of vision in the name of efficiency, Partstat API offers the best of both worlds: convenient direct access to the information the user needs to maintain their supply chain in the short term, and the market view needed to ensure success in the long term.

To inquire about how to integrate Parstat’s API into your supply chain, just email sales@partstat.com and our team of supply chain specialists will answer any questions you might have. We think you’ll like what we have to say!