5 Epicor P21 BigCommerce Integration Mistakes to Avoid

3 min read ● Silk Team

Common Epicor BigCommerce Integration Challenges (and How to Solve Them)

In today’s fast-paced ecommerce landscape, businesses are striving to achieve a seamless shopping experience by integrating their online stores with powerful back-end ERP systems. For many, connecting Epicor BigCommerce with Epicor Kinetic (formerly Epicor ERP) is a strategic decision. The goal of this integration is to unify sales, warehousing, order management, and accounting to streamline operations and drive growth. However, despite its benefits, integrating Epicor BigCommerce and Epicor Kinetic also comes with challenges. In this article, we explore these common obstacles and offer practical solutions for a seamless integration.

Understanding the Epicor BigCommerce and Epicor Kinetic Integration

Epicor BigCommerce is a popular ecommerce platform, valued for its flexibility, scalability, and robust features tailored for online retailers. Epicor Kinetic, on the other hand, is a comprehensive ERP solution that provides manufacturers and retailers with real-time data and automation capabilities. Integrating these two systems involves synchronizing product data, inventory levels, sales orders, customer information, and more between the online store and the ERP software. While the integration sounds simple on paper, differences in system architecture, data formatting, and workflows often lead to integration issues.

Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them

1. Data Sync Issues

One of the biggest hurdles to a seamless Epicor BigCommerce-Epicor Kinetic integration is ensuring accurate and timely data synchronization. This includes product information, inventory levels, pricing updates, and order statuses. Discrepancies can lead to overselling, stockouts, or delayed order fulfillment.

Solution: Leverage middleware or integration platforms that connect Epicor BigCommerce and Epicor Kinetic, such as Epicor BigCommerce Kinetic, Dell Boomi, Celigo, or custom APIs. These solutions provide real-time data synchronization, error handling, and monitoring tools. Also, establish clear data management protocols to ensure consistent data formats and avoid duplicates.

2. Complex Product Catalog Management

Epicor BigCommerce typically supports more flexible and customizable product listings than Epicor Kinetic’s ERP system, which is typically designed for standardized manufacturing SKUs and inventory structures. Managing complex product variants, bundles, and custom options can complicate integration.

How to solve the problem:

• Define a standardized product data mapping strategy before integration.
• Work closely with your IT and operations teams to align the representation of products and variants in both systems.
• Use data transformation tools in your integration workflow to normalize product data without losing important details.

3. Inconsistent Order Processing Workflows

Epicor BigCommerce order management workflows can differ significantly from Epicor Kinetic processes, especially when managing order status, payment processing, and returns. Without proper alignment, orders can be lost, duplicated, or incorrectly updated.

Solution:

• Plan the entire order lifecycle across both platforms.
• Identify key touchpoints where data must be exchanged between Epicor BigCommerce and Epicor Kinetic, and define unique status codes and triggers.
• Integrate automated reconciliation checks to quickly identify anomalies and consider integrating with custom business logic to close gaps in your workflow.

4. Managing Customizations and Updates

Both Epicor BigCommerce and Epicor Kinetic allow customizations to meet specific business requirements, from custom checkout processes to specialized ERP modules. These customizations can complicate integration, especially after platform upgrades or new feature releases.

Solution:

• Maintain strict version control and documentation of your integration processes.
• Thoroughly test integration workflows in sandboxes whenever the platform needs to be updated.
• Continuously work with your ecommerce and ERP vendors or integration specialists to adopt changes and adapt quickly.
• Implement flexible and modular integration architectures to help isolate and effectively manage custom components.

5. Security and Compliance Concerns

Integrating two critical systems involves sharing potentially sensitive customer and transaction data. Ensuring secure data transfer and complying with regulations like GDPR or PCI DSS is critical.

How to Solve the Problem:

• Use secure API connections with encryption protocols like SSL/TLS.
• Implement role-based access controls and conduct regular security audits.
• Partner with integration vendors that prioritize regulatory compliance and provide audit trails and logging capabilities.

Conclusions

The Epicor BigCommerce-Epicor Kinetic integration offers tremendous operational benefits, but it also requires careful planning and implementation to overcome challenges. With a clear integration strategy focused on data accuracy, workflow alignment, security, and adaptability, businesses can fully leverage the potential of these platforms and create a unified and efficient commerce ecosystem. Whether you’re just getting started with integration or troubleshooting existing setups, investing in the right tools and expert guidance will save you time, reduce errors, and ultimately drive business growth. Implement these integration best practices today and discover how your Epicor BigCommerce store and Epicor Kinetic ERP work together to deliver an exceptional customer experience.