ERP integration that survives contact with reality
1C, Odoo and SAP Business One, connected properly
An ERP holds the numbers that matter: stock, cost, orders, production. We connect it to the systems around it, a site, a CRM, a marketplace, so those numbers move in both directions without a person re-typing them, and we have rebuilt an ERP integration from scratch after a provider lock-out, so we know what the recovery path looks like when one fails.
What it is
An ERP holds the operational truth of a business, stock levels, costs, open orders, sometimes production schedules, and an ERP integration is the pipe that connects that truth to everything built around it: an online store that needs real stock numbers, a CRM that needs order status, a reporting layer that needs cost data without someone exporting a spreadsheet every Friday. The hard part is rarely the API call, it is the data model underneath: an ERP’s internal structure usually reflects years of accounting and operational decisions that do not map cleanly onto a website’s idea of a “product.”
When you need it (and when you do not)
You need this when stock or pricing shown to customers drifts from what is actually in the warehouse, when a manager exports a spreadsheet from the ERP by hand to update a site or a CRM, or when you are moving off a cloud ERP and need the data to land somewhere self-hosted without losing history. It is also the right project when a factory or distribution business wants its production or inventory numbers to reach a dashboard without a daily manual pull.
You do not need a full integration if your sales volume is small enough that a weekly manual stock update costs less than the project itself, or if your ERP vendor already offers a native, well-maintained plugin for the exact system you want to connect to, check that first, it is sometimes genuinely enough.
How we build it
The first two weeks are almost always spent reading the ERP’s actual data model before writing an integration against it: which fields are used consistently, which are legacy and ignored, what a “variant” or a “warehouse” means in that specific installation. For 1C we typically work through its HTTP service or OData interface; for Odoo, its XML-RPC or REST API; for SAP Business One, the Service Layer API or, where that is not licensed, a scheduled database export with strict validation on the way in. Every sync writes a per-record log, so one bad SKU does not block the other nine hundred. A conflict rule decides which system wins when two sides disagree, usually the ERP for stock and cost, the storefront for anything customer-facing, agreed with you before the first sync runs live. We have done this recovery work before: rebuilding a factory’s production and stock ERP from a lost cloud account onto infrastructure the client controls, with zero data loss during the cutover.
What to watch
ERP vendor lock-in cuts both ways: the integration itself is built against a documented API or export format, so it survives an ERP version upgrade reasonably well, but the ERP vendor’s licensing (SAP’s Service Layer, for instance) can gate which integration method is available to you. We flag licensing constraints before scoping, not after. The other real risk is scope creep inside the ERP itself, once a sync exists, it is tempting to route every report through it; we recommend keeping the ERP as the system of record for operational data and letting a separate analytics layer handle reporting, rather than overloading the live sync.
A separate consideration is staffing: the person who understands the ERP’s quirks best is often the one at the company who has used it for years, and a migration or integration project goes faster and safer when that person is involved from the first week rather than brought in only to validate the result at the end. We schedule time with them early specifically for this reason, not as a courtesy.
Price and timeline
| Scope | Price | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Single data flow (stock or pricing) | from $2,500 | 3 to 5 weeks |
| Two-way sync, orders and invoicing | from $6,000 | 5 to 8 weeks |
Related
Built as part of custom development and setup and integrations. Often paired with data migration between platforms during a cutover, and monitoring and observability to watch the sync once it is live. See the factory ERP recovery on self-hosted infrastructure for the recovery version of this project. Tell us which ERP and which systems need to talk to it: get in touch.
FAQ
How much does an ERP integration cost?
A single data flow, stock or pricing from the ERP into a site or CRM, starts at $2,500. A fuller integration covering orders, invoicing and production data in both directions runs $5,000 to $12,000, depending on how custom the ERP's data model is.
How long does it take?
3 to 8 weeks. ERP integrations take longer than most because the data model is rarely documented well, and a chart of accounts or a custom field someone added five years ago needs to be understood before it can be mapped safely.
Which ERPs do you work with?
1C, Odoo and SAP Business One most often, connected through their native API, ODBC, or a scheduled export when no API exists. We have rebuilt a full production and stock ERP from a lost SaaS account onto self-hosted infrastructure, so we are comfortable working without vendor support.
Who owns the code and the data?
You do. The integration runs on your infrastructure or a VPS in your name, and every mapping decision is documented so your own team or a future vendor can maintain it.
What is the ongoing maintenance?
An ERP changes less often than a SaaS API, so maintenance is lighter once live: mostly watching the alerts we set up and reviewing the monthly sync report. A version upgrade on the ERP side is the most common reason to revisit the mapping.