SmartBear, a leading provider of software quality and visibility solutions, today announced the results of a commissioned Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of SmartBear showing that use of SmartBear’s API solutions led to faster design, test, and documentation workflows. This resulted in a 227% ROI over three years for a global composite organization with 10,000 employees and 200 developers, based on interviewed customers.  

With SmartBear Swagger – a suite of API developer tools – developers achieved a 50% efficiency in designing, developing, and testing APIs. Swagger’s API-first mindset resulted in better developer communication, less time in meetings documenting APIs, and the ability to identify potential challenges sooner.  

With SmartBear, the Forrester study also found that API discoverability improved because APIs are consistently and accurately documented. This resulted in 30% of APIs being reused in year 3. Improved testing and accurate, up-to-date documentation meant developers spent less time addressing questions from API consumers, and consumers could also self-serve. This led to a total savings of up to $1.1 million over three years in net present value. Payback of the original investment took just seven months. 

“The rapid growth of the API market is raising the bar for how organizations build software,” said Kim Steinberg, vice president of product management for Swagger at SmartBear. “APIs are the backbone of modern applications, and organizations that move faster and operate more effectively will gain a clear competitive advantage, especially as AI reshapes how software is created.” 

SmartBear provides a central environment for developers to collaboratively design, test, document, and discover APIs at scale. Forrester conducted its study via interviews with six customer decision-makers across four organizations, including an enterprise global retailer and financial services company, using SmartBear’s API solutions. Forrester aggregated the experiences and combined the results into a “composite organization” to produce its economic findings.  

Prior to using SmartBear, the organizations designed APIs with code-first practices, lacking standardized and collaborative ways to test and document APIs. They struggled with siloed API operations, poor API documentation, and slow onboarding processes for API consumers. Developers were also often unsure what APIs existed within their own environment. “These time-consuming processes often led to redundant work and inefficiencies across the API development lifecycle,” Forrester’s study states. With Swagger, APIs were developed with a “design-first” mindset, which enhanced collaboration across developers, architects, and product teams, Forrester found. Key study findings include: 

• API development efficiencies. The 50% gain resulted in time savings worth $699,000 over three years.
• Improved API reusability. By year three, 30% of the composite organization’s APIs were reused – resulting in $672,000 in time savings.
• API consumer support efficiencies. The 70% efficiency gain on consumer support tasks was worth $151,000 in time savings over three years.

Forrester also noted “unquantified benefits” as improvements in developer satisfaction, cross-functional collaboration, and API standardization and quality. The composite organization benefited from process standardization, which influenced best practices across teams.  

For a complimentary copy of “The Total Economic Impact™ of SmartBear’s API Solutions,” please click here: https://smartbear.com/lp/forrester-tei/