Streamlined Headless ERP Integration

Headless Integration with Your ERP

A seamless integration of headless eCommerce with ERP configuration and back-office/warehouse management systems is crucial for scaling and fully leveraging the benefits of headless eCommerce. One of the major strengths of headless eCommerce is its superior ability to adapt to any interface that's essential to an organization.

An enterprise-level business—or a small business with plans to grow quickly—can take advantage of different user interfaces and capabilities offered by an eCommerce system; this is accomplished by leveraging the existing systems across all of the different channels that the enterprise might use. A key aspect of an ERP system is how it typically serves as the system of record or a final source of truth for:

• Category data
• Product data
• Customer data
• Transactional data
• Pricing information
• Inventory information
• Customer self-service tracking
• Orders (along with fulfillment, status, refunds and other information)

Although some additional data may be required in order to fully “enrich” the information, the ERP or back-office system is usually the source of truth for the baseline core information the business uses to operate (e.g. to provide customer support, status of orders, resources around pricing and inventory levels, etc.).

It's critical that the ERP system and the headless eCommerce platform are able to interact smoothly, as it will allow the business to seamlessly scale and leverage that system of record. The ERP or warehouse management system is a source of truth that will be able to flawlessly present information across all of the various user interfaces that are consuming the headless architecture.

Utilizing a Headless eCommerce Platform to Its Fullest Extent

The general concept behind headless eCommerce is that the user interface is not available with the back-end. Instead, the user interface, or front-end, is separate. With decoupled eCommerce, there is a default interface that's available, yet not required. This means that you can pair any front-end application with your back-end application, thus providing unmatched versatility and flexability.

However, the functionality and the data, as well as the ability to update the data, are required to leverage the headless platform in a practical way. This is where integration to your business systems, such as your ERP, CRM (customer relationship management) system, warehouse management system, accounting system, etc., comes in. Integrating these systems with your headless back-office application allows you to fully take advantage of the robust functionality your platform provides. Or in other words, the headless eCommerce system needs the data to enrich the experience of its functionality.

Possibilities of the Clarity Connect Platform

To fully take advantage of the benefits of a headless eCommerce system, you need robust integration to one or more line-of-business applications, like an ERP or accounting system. It's best to work with a software developer and integrator like Clarity Ventures that has a lot of experience with consistently leveraging the headless eCommerce APIs for the back-office systems and seamlessly incorporating the data that you dictate into your complex business logic. We can also incorporate multiple ERP systems or business applications into your headless eCommerce system.

An important part of this process is mapping, which involves the different entities, tables of data, sets of data, fields within those sets of data, and the business logic that will drive how that data is mapped between the headless eCommerce system and the new ERP system that you're integrating with. An expert development partner like Clarity Ventures can make sure that all your data is mapped correctly and it's easy to update your data when you need to.

Personalized Approach that Aligns with Your Business Needs

Clarity provides detailed and hands-on resources with this mapping process. We'll work very closely with your team and continually collaborate to ensure that your mappings are kept up to date and that your business logic is constantly updated as your business grows.

At the beginning of the project, we go through a detailed mapping discovery exercise. We discuss with your team and stakeholders how your business mapping should be structured and what the associated business logic should be. With those mappings in particular, it's really helpful to look at the specific systems, their APIs, and their different capabilities to guide the mapping of different entities and fields within the headless CRM or ERP, or line of business application.

Clarity Ventures: Headless ERP Integration Experts

The Clarity team has experience with hundreds of integrations that were completed on various different systems. Our integration options can be viewed on our integration pages. We can do any of these integrations, and even more (i.e., with custom eCommerce API integration), to deliver a successful headless eCommerce integration to an ERP or back-office system of your choosing. For any integration or headless eCommerce implementation, we recommend working with a team of experts with demonstrated success in delivering robust, complicated, and consistently efficient headless eCommerce integration projects.

The Clarity team welcomes you to reach out if you have any questions regarding headless architecture or would like to review with one of our experts and receive a free consultation about your software development project. You're also welcome to review the resources below and discover answers to any questions you may have.