Published on Aug 13, 2024

Ever wondered how your favorite app manages to handle millions of users without a hitch? Behind the curtain of seamless user experiences lies a powerful yet often overlooked component: the API Gateway. Often overlooked, the API Gateway is the unsung orchestrator that ensures seamless and secure interactions between your clients and serverless functions. It’s not always in the spotlight, but its role is indispensable. From directing traffic to fortifying security, the API Gateway is the silent guardian that ensures everything operates efficiently and safely behind the scenes.

Let’s dive into this blog to discover why the API Gateway is essential for maintaining order and optimizing performance in your serverless setup.

API Gateway: A Unified Front for Your System

Imagine your serverless functions as a network of specialized components, each designed to handle a unique task. With a central command, managing these components would be smooth. The API Gateway serves as a central hub, offering a single entry point for all incoming requests. It directs these requests to the appropriate function, ensuring each one receives the attention it deserves and simplifying the management of your serverless ecosystem.

Security Beyond Compare

Just as a high-tech security system safeguards sensitive information, the API Gateway provides robust security measures for your serverless functions. It enforces authentication and authorization, protecting your services from unauthorized access. With tools like API keys, OAuth, and IP whitelisting, the API Gateway secures your backend, ensuring that only legitimate requests reach your services.

Expert Traffic Management

Strategic planning is crucial for handling numerous challenges. The API Gateway mirrors this expertise with its traffic management capabilities. It employs rate limiting and throttling to prevent your serverless functions from being overwhelmed by excessive requests. This ensures optimal performance even during peak traffic periods, maintaining order in your serverless environment.

Transformation and Adaptation

Versatility is key in handling diverse challenges. The API Gateway embodies this versatility with its request and response transformation capabilities. It can convert data formats and adapt protocols, ensuring seamless communication between clients and serverless functions. This adaptability is essential for meeting varying data needs.

Insightful Monitoring and Analytics

Effective analysis is crucial for planning and optimization. The API Gateway offers powerful monitoring and analytics tools, tracking essential metrics like request counts, latency, and error rates. These insights help you optimize and troubleshoot your application, maintaining peak performance.

Performance Boosting Caching

Enhanced efficiency is vital for performance. The API Gateway’s caching feature improves the performance of your serverless functions by storing frequently requested data. This reduces the number of direct calls to your functions, speeding up response times and cutting costs.

Protocol Translation

Versatility in handling different scenarios is crucial. The API Gateway showcases this versatility through its protocol translation capabilities. It can manage various communication protocols, such as converting WebSocket messages into HTTP requests. This ensures that your serverless functions can interact with a broad range of clients and systems.

API Versioning

As your application evolves, API versioning allows you to make updates without disrupting existing users. The API Gateway manages different versions of your API, facilitating smooth updates and new feature rollouts while maintaining compatibility with current clients. This evolution is essential for keeping your application relevant and functional as it grows.

Real-World Scenario

Imagine a retail application with serverless functions handling tasks like authentication, product search, and order processing. The API Gateway acts as the central orchestrator, managing interactions between these functions and the users (clients). When a user logs in, the API Gateway directs the request to the authentication function. For product searches, it routes requests to the search function, and for orders, it ensures requests are processed efficiently and accurately.

Conclusion

API Gateway ensures everything runs smoothly and securely, keeping your serverless functions organized and efficient. It handles access management, adds layers of security, controls traffic flow, and offers insights into how things are working, all while adapting to your specific needs.

By harnessing the power of the API Gateway, you’re setting your application up for success. It’s like having a reliable sidekick that ensures your serverless setup operates without a hitch, ready to tackle any challenges that come your way. Your serverless architecture relies on the API Gateway to keep things running seamlessly and securely.

In healthcare, field sales is more than just hitting quotas—it’s about navigating a complex stakeholder ecosystem that spans hospitals, clinics, diagnostics labs, and pharmacies. Reps are expected to juggle compliance, education, and relationship-building—all on the move.

But, traditional systems can’t keep up.

Only 28% of a rep’s time is spent selling; the rest is lost to administrative tasks, CRM updates, and fragmented workflows.

— Salesforce, State of Sales 2024

This is where mobile-first sales apps in healthcare are changing the game—empowering sales teams to work smarter, faster, and more compliantly.

The Real Challenges in Traditional Field Sales

Despite their scale, many healthcare sales teams still rely on outdated tools that drag down performance:

Paper-based reporting: Slows down data consolidation and misses real-time insights
Siloed CRMs: Fragmented systems lead to broken workflows

According to a study by HubSpot, 32% of reps spend at least an hour per day just entering data into CRMs.

Managing Visits: Visits require planning, which may involve a lot of stress since doctors have a busy schedule, making it difficult for sales reps to meet them.
Inconsistent feedback loops: Managers struggle to coach and support reps effectively
Compliance gaps: Manual processes are audit-heavy and unreliable

These issues don’t just affect productivity—they erode trust, delay decisions, and increase revenue leakage.

What a Mobile-First Sales App in Healthcare Should Deliver

According to Deloitte’s 2025 Global Healthcare Executive Outlook, organizations are prioritizing digital tools to reduce burnout, drive efficiency, and enable real-time collaboration. A mobile-first sales app in healthcare is a critical part of this shift—especially for hybrid field teams dealing with fragmented systems and growing compliance demands.

Core Features of a Mobile-First Sales App in Healthcare

1. Smart Visit Planning & Route Optimization

Field reps can plan high-impact visits, reduce travel time, and log interactions efficiently. Geo-tagged entries ensure field activity transparency.

2. In-App KYC & E-Detailing

According to Viseven, over 60% of HCPs prefer on-demand digital content over live rep interactions, and self-detailing can increase engagement up to 3x compared to traditional methods.
By enabling self-detailing within the mobile app, reps can deliver compliance-approved content, enable interactive, personalized detailing during or after HCP visits, and give HCPs control over when and how they engage.

3. Real-Time Escalation & Commission Tracking

Track escalation tickets and incentive eligibility on the go, reducing back-and-forth and improving rep satisfaction.

4. Centralized Knowledge Hub

Push product updates, training videos, and compliance checklists—directly to reps’ devices. Maintain alignment across distributed teams.

5. Live Dashboards for Performance Tracking

Sales leaders can view territory-wise performance, rep productivity, and engagement trends instantly, enabling proactive decision-making.

Case in Point: Digitizing Sales for a Leading Pharma Firm

Mantra Labs partnered with a top Indian pharma firm to streamline pharmacy workflows inside their ecosystem.

The Challenge:

Pharmacists were struggling with operational inefficiencies that directly impacted patient care and satisfaction.
Delays in prescription fulfillment were becoming increasingly common due to a lack of real-time inventory visibility and manual processing bottlenecks.
Critical stock-out alerts were either missed or delayed, leading to unavailability of essential medicines when needed.
Additionally, communication gaps between pharmacists and prescribing doctors led to frequent clarifications, rework, and slow turnaround times—affecting both speed and accuracy in dispensing medication.

These challenges not only disrupted the pharmacy workflow but also created a ripple effect across the wider care delivery ecosystem.

Our Solution:

We designed a custom digital pharmacy module with:

Inventory Management: Centralized tracking of sales, purchases, returns, and expiry alerts
Revenue Snapshot: Real-time tracking of dues, payments, and cash flow
ShortBook Dashboard: Stock views by medicine, distributor, and manufacturer
Smart Reporting: Instant downloadable reports for accounts, stock, and sales

Business Impact:

2x faster prescription fulfillment, reducing wait times and improving patient experience
27% reduction in stock-out incidents through real-time alerts and inventory visibility
81% reduction in manual errors, thanks to automation and real-time dashboards
Streamlined doctor-pharmacy coordination, leading to fewer clarifications and faster dispensing

Integration Is Key

A mobile-first sales app in healthcare is as strong as the ecosystem it fits into. Mantra Labs ensures seamless integration with:

CRM systems for lead and pipeline tracking
HRMS for leave, attendance, and performance sync
LMS to deliver ongoing training
Product Catalogs to support detailing and onboarding

Ready to Empower Your Sales Teams?

From lead capture to conversion, Mantra Labs helps you automate, streamline, and accelerate every step of the sales journey.

Whether you’re managing field agents, handling complex product configurations, or tracking customer interactions — we bring the tech & domain expertise to cut manual effort and boost productivity.

Let’s simplify your sales workflows. Book a quick call.

Further Reading: How Smarter Sales Apps Are Reinventing the Frontlines of Insurance Distribution

Why Your Serverless Applications Need an API Gateway?