ERP integration for wholesale ecommerce, done as one hub
Your ERP already holds the true version of your products, stock, prices, customers and orders. ERP integration is the discipline of getting that truth to every channel you sell through — and every order back — without anyone rekeying anything. Done well it is invisible. Done badly it is why the website oversells, the price on screen differs from the invoice, and Monday starts with reconciliation.
What ERP integration actually moves
"Connect our ERP" sounds like one job. It is six, and each has its own rules, its own direction of travel, and its own ways of going wrong. A quote that does not name which of these are in scope is not a quote.
Products
Titles, descriptions, images, variants, categories. Usually enriched outside the ERP but anchored to it — the SKU is the contract everything else hangs on.
Stock
The flow with the least patience for delay. Availability shown to buyers should reflect what the ERP knows, updated as it changes — stale stock is how channels teach customers to phone first.
Prices
In wholesale, not one price but price lists per customer or group, contract prices and quantity breaks. The price a buyer sees at log-in must be the price the ERP would invoice.
Customers
Accounts, delivery addresses, credit terms, catalogue entitlements. Orders must land against the right account — duplicate customer records are where reconciliation pain is born.
Orders
Every channel's orders into one ERP order book, attributed correctly, with no manual rekeying — which removes the main cause of mispriced lines and missed orders. Back orders included, handled the way the ERP expects.
Invoices & credits
Status, documents and credit notes flowing back out, so buyers can self-serve "where is my order?" and "resend that invoice" instead of emailing your office.
If the vocabulary here is new, start with the plain-English explainer: what ERP integration is — written for the commercial side of the business, not the technical one.
The four ways ERP system integration gets built
Every integration project chooses one of these shapes, usually without realising it is the decision that matters most.
Point-to-point connections
Each system wired directly to each other system. Quick for the first link, then the maths turns hostile — every new channel multiplies the connections, and every ERP upgrade touches all of them. Why this shape fails is the most-read thing we have written.
File feeds
Scheduled imports and exports. Unfashionable and genuinely fine for slow-moving data with a stable format and a clear owner — we run structured file feeds as a first-class connector, not a fallback to apologise for.
Generic middleware
A general-purpose iPaaS with connectors for everything. Powerful when someone in-house owns it permanently; in practice the "someone" is the hard part, and wholesale-specific rules — price lists, back orders, entitlements — end up custom-built anyway.
A purpose-built hub
One maintained layer between the ERP and every channel, built for commerce data specifically. Each system connects once; upgrades are absorbed in the hub; the ERP stays the system of record. This is what we run — the Integration Data Hub.
Choosing between these — and between the platforms that embody them — is the subject of our honest comparison of how UK wholesalers run B2B, including the cases where the simpler shapes are the right answer and we are not.
The connectors we publish and maintain
A short list, on purpose. Each of these is a maintained connector carrying live trade — not a logo wall. Anything not on it is scoped honestly as bespoke work.
ERPs
Brightpearl — our deepest connector, covering products, stock, prices, customers, orders, back orders and invoices. SAP Business One — for wholesalers running SAP B1 on-premise or cloud. Caliq — wholesale-specialist ERP, live with UK clients.
Channels & tools
Shopify as an optional D2C channel alongside our native storefronts. Faire for wholesale marketplace orders. Blue Alligator for rep and van sales. Structured file feeds where a system speaks files rather than APIs.
And the storefront itself
The hub feeds our own B2B platform — trade ordering with customer-specific pricing, account terms and back orders — and D2C stores from the same catalogue, so every channel agrees with the ERP and with each other.
What ERP integration costs — honestly
Nobody publishes a price for this work, and most of the cost figures circulating online do not survive being checked — so we published the model instead of a number. The ERP integration cost page sets out the six drivers that move the figure, the one-off, recurring and hidden shape of the spend, and the six questions that make competing quotes comparable. No email gate. Our own pricing structure is public, and a discovery call turns it into a figure for your systems.
ERP integration questions
What is ERP integration?
Connecting your ERP — the system that holds the true version of your products, stock, prices, customers and orders — to the other systems that need that information, so it flows automatically instead of being rekeyed by hand. For a wholesaler that usually means the ERP feeding a trade ordering site, a D2C store and marketplaces, and orders flowing back the other way. We have written a fuller plain-English explainer covering the six record types and the four ways integration gets built.
Which ERP systems do you integrate with?
We publish maintained connectors for Brightpearl, SAP Business One and Caliq, alongside Shopify, Faire, Blue Alligator and structured file feeds. Other systems are scoped honestly as bespoke work rather than promised as off-the-shelf — and if a system only offers file-based exchange, the hub works with scheduled feeds rather than pretending everything must be an API.
Does ERP integration have to be real-time?
No, and treating real-time as automatically better is one of the most common scoping mistakes. Orders and stock adjustments usually justify event-driven speed; product content, price lists and invoices are often better on a schedule, because a predictable hourly sync is easier to reason about and to check than a constant stream. A good integration mixes both deliberately, flow by flow.
How long does ERP integration take?
It depends on the same drivers as cost: which ERP, how many record types move, how clean the data is, and how unusual your commercial rules are. A connection using an existing maintained connector with clean data is weeks; a first-time integration with messy data and complex pricing rules is months. Anyone quoting a timescale before seeing your systems is guessing — the honest answer arrives after discovery, not before.
What does ERP integration cost?
There is no honest single figure, so we published a working model instead: the six drivers that move the number, the one-off, recurring and hidden shape of the spend, and the questions that make supplier quotes comparable. It is ungated — no email required.
Who looks after the integration once it is live?
With a hub, that question has one answer: the hub's operator — us. That covers absorbing ERP upgrades and API changes, monitoring the flows, and making rule changes as your trading evolves. With point-to-point builds the same question often has three answers pointing at each other, and ownership after go-live is exactly where those arrangements come apart.
Talk through your ERP and your channels
A discovery call maps what you run today — ERP, channels, the rules that make your trading yours — against what the hub would need to carry. You leave with a scope and its assumptions, not a sales pitch. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.