By: Adam Littell
You need to integrate your ERP into your eCommerce website. Where do you start? With so many different ERP systems and website platforms, it’s difficult to understand how your ERP will integrate and talk back-and-forth keeping data up-to-date on both sides. Learn more about what to think of as you head down this road.
A Successful ERP eCommerce Website Integration Starts With Planning
Integrating your website and ERP can be a lot of work and often involves a lot of moving pieces, on the client-side and the web development team. Like most complicated processes (such as building a home), the success of the project comes down to how well the project was planned at the very beginning. Did the developers ask the right questions upfront or are they now, halfway through the project, asking questions that are obvious to everyone that they should have asked before? Typically ERPs are integrated with eCommerce websites and it takes a lot of experience to pull off the integration successfully. No matter ERP software you’re using, (SAP, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, Oracle, etc.) the way you need to think about data moving in a two-way process is very similar.
The ERP Data: It’s a Two-Way Street
When you have data in an ERP system, typically you’ll be looking to push data from the ERP to your website and also send data back from your ERP to the website. Determining the exact data points you want to send in both directions at the beginning of the project will not only make the project run much smoother but will also allow you to receive an accurate price quote from your web development company. If an agency is guessing, assumptions can pop up midway through the project and that’s not fun for either party.
Examples of basic data fields that are transferred in a two-way ERP eCommerce website integration:
| Data Point | ERP to Website | Website to ERP |
| Product Data (descriptions, pricing) |  |
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| Product Stock Levels | |
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| Order Details | |
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| Order Updates (status, shipping tracking) | |
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| Customer Information | |
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| Offline Invoice Information | |
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The above is merely an example to get you thinking about your business data and processes. Apply these to your scenarios and develop a chart like the above for your agency or work with them to put it together based on their expertise.
