Every ERP integration eventually reduces to one question: when the storefront and the ERP hold different values for the same field, which one wins?
Decide ownership first
- Products and attributes — usually ERP or PIM, rarely the storefront.
- Pricing — ERP for contract pricing, storefront for promotions.
- Inventory — ERP, with a cached view on the storefront and a defined staleness tolerance.
- Orders — storefront creates, ERP becomes system of record after acknowledgement.
- Customers and credit — ERP, with the storefront reading terms and limits.
Sync patterns that hold up
Real-time for inventory checks at cart and checkout, scheduled batches for catalog and pricing, and queued retries for orders so a brief ERP outage does not lose a sale. Anything that requires the ERP to be reachable for a customer to browse will eventually take your storefront down with it.
Questions worth asking
Ask how they handle a failed order push, how they reconcile inventory drift, and whether they have integrated your specific ERP version. Version matters more than vendor.
