Manufacturers rely on technology on the production floor and in the office. One of the most important parts of business software architecture is the ERP. And as more and more manufacturers move to online sales, it’s increasingly important that eCommerce platforms and ERP integration result in the elimination of data silos that drag down productivity and reduce customer satisfaction. Here are answers to frequently asked questions about ERP integration for manufacturing.

Why is eCommerce and ERP integration important? 

Your ERP contains valuable information about your products, your customers, and your supply chain. It is used to schedule your production and bill for products sold. It’s the basis for your financial statements and much of your management reports. 

Your eCommerce platform contains information about your customers, their purchasing habits, and is a valuable sales channel.

To better serve your customers, reduce duplicate data entry, and improve management reporting, data needs to be shared between the two software applications. That’s what eCommerce ERP integration is all about. 

What are the barriers to ERP integration?

Just because ERP integration is important doesn’t mean that it is necessarily easy. ERPs tend to be legacy systems that are highly customized for the individual application. These customizations make upgrading difficult. As a result, the ERP is probably not up-to-date, and it probably won’t be brought up to date. 

The ERP is so important to the manufacturing company that it’s probably 15 to 20 years old and based on technology that was state-of-the-art for its day. 

On the other hand, manufacturers have only been engaged in eCommerce for a few years. Many of them for less than 5 years. This means their eCommerce platform is newer software that’s created with newer technology.

One of the largest barriers to integration is the technology dichotomy. 

Can all ERP and eCommerce platforms integrate?

It depends on the ERP and the eCommerce platform. If both solutions are proprietary, then integration will be difficult.

The ERP integration picture becomes much brighter when one or both of the solutions is open source. That means the code is available for anyone to view and edit.

Application Programming interfaces (APIs) let programs talk to each other. They work like the waitstaff in a restaurant. They transmit your order to the kitchen and return with your food. In order to do this, they must be able to speak to the diners and the table and the cooks in the restaurant. 

APIs are easier to create when you have access to code, and open-source applications have easily accessible code.

What data should be transferred?

When planning your ERP integration, it’s important to decide what data should be integrated and what data can stand alone.

If you map where data is currently entered and where it will be used once the systems are integrated, you can get a better picture of how data should flow.

For example, when an order is received through an existing electronic data interface with a customer, where will the data enter the integrated system, at the eCommerce platform or the ERP?

Once you know what data should be transferred and how it should flow, then you are ready to consider strategies to make the data transfer happen.

What are the different ERP integration strategies commonly used?

There are several different strategies you can use for eCommerce ERP integration. The strategy you adopt depends on the total number of integrations that must be made. It’s possible there are other applications to integrate such as your product information management (PIM) solution or your warehouse management solution (WMS). You must also consider company growth plans. If scalability is important, then the number of strategies decreases as all strategies don’t scale well.

The two most commonly used integration strategies are peer-to-peer and middleware.

What is the difference between peer-to-peer and middleware?

With peer-to-peer ERP integration, you create individual integrations for each application. So, to integrate ERP and eCommerce, you create a single integration. That’s simple. But, as you add more solutions, the integrations quickly become more complex as you can see below. 

Two applications only require 1 connection, but 3 applications require 3 connections, and by the time you connect 4 applications you need 6 connections and things are getting complicated fast!

The alternative is to use middleware. This is exactly like the waitstaff at the restaurant. But, instead of shuttling orders and food between diners and kitchens, the middleware is moving data.

The two most common middleware strategies are the hub and the enterprise service bus (ESB).

What is the difference between the hub and ESB strategies?

With a hub strategy, the applications are configured like spokes on a wheel and the hub sits at the center. Each application has a spoke that translates the application’s data into a format that the hub can understand. Then the hub translates the data and transforms it into a format the other system can understand and sends the data along to the intended receiving application. It looks like this:

This is great if once again, you don’t have too many applications to connect. Otherwise, it takes a great deal of hardware processing capacity to handle all the translating and routing that’s necessary.

The other middleware approach is to utilize and ESB. With this approach, each application talks to the bus. The bus doesn’t worry about converting data, it just acts as a conduit for the message. This strategy looks like this:

This is the preferred approach if you have many systems to integrate or if you plan an extending your present architecture. This approach scales much more easily and is perfect when agility is important. 

What are the different synchronization strategies?

Great question! Now that you know how data will be transferred it’s important to establish when it will be transferred. There are two basic strategies: real-time processing and batch processing.

What is the difference between real-time and batch processing?

With real-time processing, data is constantly transferred and updated. For example, when an order is placed or a payment is made, the data is transferred from one system to the other immediately after the transaction is made.

This strategy is utilized when time is of the essence. For example, when you withdraw money at an ATM, the funds are subtracted from your account immediately. This is a resource-intensive synchronization strategy. Both the ERP and eCommerce applications must constantly monitor and look for change.

A more common strategy is to use batch processing. This is where the integrated application periodically exchanges data that has transferred. The period can be set at whatever makes the best business and economic sense for the business. For example, orders can be transferred from the eCommerce platform several times a day and at the end of the day, order status, billing, and tracking can be transferred back from the ERP to the eCommerce website.

What else should I know about ERP integration?

Chances are, this isn’t something you will go alone. Talk to your ERP and eCommerce platform vendors about your integration plans. They can recommend partners to help you through the process or may even have integration resources available to you.