{"id":10959,"date":"2016-11-15T17:06:06","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T17:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.intercom.com\/?p=10959"},"modified":"2020-07-30T12:59:15","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T11:59:15","slug":"harnessing-the-power-of-platforms-at-intercom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/harnessing-the-power-of-platforms-at-intercom\/","title":{"rendered":"Opening up the power of Intercom’s platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Good Friday in 1962, Lou Groen trialled a new sandwich in his Ohio burger restaurant.<\/p>\n

It was a last-ditch attempt to save a failing business \u2013 a ploy to attract the large local Catholic population who couldn\u2019t eat meat on Fridays.<\/p>\n

The simple patty of fish with a single slice of cheese was a success, selling over 350 sandwiches in that first trial. Today, over 300 million of these sandwiches \u2013 now known as McDonald\u2019s Filet-O-Fish \u2013 are eaten every year.<\/p>\n

Groen wasn\u2019t a McDonald\u2019s employee, he was a franchise owner. But his new sandwich added value to McDonald\u2019s offering and fulfilled a niche job for a specific group of customers in a particular area \u2013 a need that probably wasn\u2019t as obvious to his bosses at McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The Filet-O-Fish is just one of the many famous McDonald\u2019s products, including the Happy Meal, the Big Mac and the McFlurry, invented by franchisees. While\u00a0we might associate the phrase \u201cplatform company\u201d with software giants like Salesforce rather than burger chains, this is a perfect example of the power of platforms and the value of an ecosystem made up of smart people building things.<\/p>\n

Creating a canvas for solving problems<\/h2>\n

In technology, platform companies exist to bring producers and consumers together, allowing customers and developers to adapt and create the tools they use to work better for them. It\u2019s naive to believe that every customer will use your product in exactly the same way. Each will have their own workflows and processes and will be using other products alongside yours.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0growing ecosystem around the Intercom platform<\/a> is an essential part of building the most valuable product possible for our customers.<\/p>\n

For many of our customers, Intercom acts as the single source of truth for customer data<\/a>, with data flowing in and out of Intercom to and from other tools used by each team. From the start, we\u2019ve focused on making Intercom flexible, as we believe technology should adapt to your needs, not the other way around. That flexibility provides a canvas for our users\u2019 creativity. We love hearing stories from our customers<\/a> about the different and unexpected ways they\u2019re using Intercom.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re never going to be able \u2013 and wouldn\u2019t want to \u2013 create all the features that anyone could ever need for the vast number of different ways they\u2019re using Intercom. But there are many other companies building innovative, smart solutions that can extend what you can do with Intercom, which is why we\u2019re so committed to providing an open platform<\/a> for others to build on.<\/p>\n

Introducing the Intercom Developer Program<\/h2>\n


\nWith the Developer Program<\/a>, we want to help developers make their integrations a success and\u00a0help our customers discover good quality tools so they can\u00a0get even more from Intercom.<\/p>\n

Approved members will be listed on our website, alongside built-by-Intercom integrations with Slack, Facebook and more, to make them easy to discover. We\u2019re excited to announce our first members:<\/p>\n