My company wants to purchase new software for our General Ledger.  We want to be able to interface it with various other sytems, all purchased.  Nothing is custom built.  The software our Accountants like does not have any APIs.  However it does allow for imports and exports through various file formats. The imports (which are most import to us) can be triggered by an import file being placed in a folder.  A steering committee that is involved in this purchasing decision is made up of people who are not either IT people or programmers.  They're lawyers, a chief executives, a compliance officer and a few others in similar roles.  They are fixated on this software having an API, or APIs, I don't which is more proper.  It seems to me that with the import and export functionality we can do what we need to do.  Since we don't write our own software we couldn't code to an API.  But, I don't have enough experience to really know what an API might offer that the software in question couldn't deliver.  I chair the steering committee and would like us not to get side tracked by something that I suspect is irrelevant.  Can anyone help me to understand what I might be missing, or rather how an API would be advantageous?
Management wants an API in purchased software
management;api;decisions