Common Mistakes to Avoid When Integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with an eCommerce Platform

3 min read ● Silk Team

The connection of an eCommerce platform to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is the key to transforming the way your business manages your orders, inventory, and financial data. With a properly designed and implemented integration, you create a seamless exchange of information between your online store and ERP system. However, many organizations underestimate the complexity involved in creating an effective integration between an eCommerce platform and an ERP system which leads to operational issues affecting your customers, reporting accuracy, and scalability.

Identifying the most common mistakes made while integrating an ERP system with an eCommerce platform will allow you to minimize potential operational disruptions and maximize the effectiveness of the interaction between your two systems.

Why Business Central – eCommerce Platform Integration Matters

Effective integration of an ERP system with an eCommerce platform facilitates the connection of all the essential processes including:

• Inventory synchronization
• Order management
• Updating of customer data
• Reporting of financials
• Workflows for shipping and fulfillment

If the above mentioned processes are not planned out effectively, they can quickly become disassociated — resulting in incorrect quantities of items in inventory, delayed orders, or inconsistent financial reporting.

1. Skipping the Design Phase of Your Integration Plan

Companies that rush into the integration process without first developing a solid plan are likely to encounter significant difficulties.

Companies generally do not consider connecting their systems to be a complex technical task; however, successfully integrating an ERP system and eCommerce platform involves the definition of:

• The data flowing between systems
• Rules for synchronizing data
• Processes for exception handling
• Frequency of updating (in real time versus schedule based)

Why this is important: An improperly developed integration plan can result in duplicate data being created within your systems, or in data discrepancies between your systems, or in missing workflow processes.

Best Practice: Before beginning to develop your integration, document each point where data is touched.

2. Creating a Weak Inventory Synchronization Strategy

Inventory is one of the most critical elements of eCommerce integration.

Common challenges that occur when creating an inventory synchronization strategy include:

• Over selling products due to the delay in receiving updated inventory levels
• Inventory mismatches between your eCommerce platform and Business Central
• Product unavailability displayed on your eCommerce storefront

These commonly occur when an organization relies upon batch updates rather than near real time updates or does not designate the ERP as the source of truth for inventory levels.

Best Practice: Make Business Central the sole authority for your inventory levels and update your inventory levels when orders are placed, shipments are confirmed, and returns are processed.

3. Ignoring Data Mapping Requirements

Each system organizes data in its own way. If you do not map your product, customer, and order fields accurately, your integration may still “work,” but your data will be inaccurate.

Common mistakes related to data mapping include:

• Inaccurate mappings of tax fields
• Missing product attributes
• Duplicates of customer records
• Differences in formats of SKU’s

Best Practice: Develop a comprehensive document outlining the specific field-by-field mapping of your data prior to implementing your integration.

4. Underestimating the Importance of Order Workflow Processes

When orders move from your eCommerce platform to Business Central, there needs to be a structured process in place for those orders to progress. Without a well-designed workflow, you can encounter the following issues:

• Orders remain in a pending status indefinitely
• Missing shipping details
• Failure of payment reconciliation

A well-developed integration will outline the process for orders to progress through various stages of the process including:

• Creation of orders
• Confirmation of payments
• Fulfillment
• Tracking of shipments
• Posting of financials

Best Practice: Be sure that your integration replicates your current operational workflow.

5. Failure to Consider the Need for Error Handling

As stated previously, integrations do not always function flawlessly 100% of the time.

Common errors include:

• Failures of API calls
• Errors related to data validation
• Duplicates of transactions
• Disruptions of networks

Without proper monitoring, these types of issues can go undetected until your customers begin complaining about the issue.

Best Practice: Implement the following error detection tools:

• Logging of errors
• Mechanisms for retrying failed transactions
• Notifications for alerting
• Dashboards for monitoring the health of your integration

6. Customizing too Quickly

Companies often rush into customized development without first exploring available connectors and middleware solutions for their integration.

Customized development can provide unique solutions to problems you encounter, but excessive custom coding can also:

• Increase the cost of maintenance
• Create obstacles to upgrades
• Slowly hinder the ability to modify platforms in the future

Best Practice: Use standard APIs and proven connectors for your integration first, and only use customization if absolutely necessary.

7. Failure to Consider the Need for Scalability and Performance

An integration that functions for 50 orders per day may fail when the company grows to 5000 orders per day.

Common scalability challenges include:

• Throttling of API calls
• Slowness of synchronization speeds
• Bottlenecks in databases

Organizations typically realize these limitations during high traffic periods such as sales promotions, holiday shopping, etc.

Best Practice: Test your integration under heavy loads of transactions before deploying your solution to production.

What Can You Learn?

Creating a successful integration between Business Central and an eCommerce platform requires significantly more than simply connecting APIs. Successful integration requires careful planning, a well-designed architecture for data governance, and a well-designed workflow.

To avoid making the critical mistakes listed below:

• Failure to plan the integration
• Weaknesses in inventory synchronization
• Gaps in data mapping
• Weaknesses in order workflow processes
• Failure to monitor for errors
• Too much customization
• Failure to consider the need for scalability

Organizations that take proactive steps to address these issues early in the development cycle will be able to implement an integration that supports business growth, increases operational efficiency, and provides a better experience for their customers.

Final Thoughts

ERP-eCommerce integration is a strategic investment, not just a technical endeavor. Organizations that take the time to plan their integration with a clear architecture, a good governance model for their data, and a scalable workflow will derive the greatest benefits from connecting their Business Central with their online storefront.