E-commerce ↔ ERP: Choose an Integration Hub — not Point-to-Point

Why a direct integration might be a bad idea

Direct integration sounds fast — until it has to change, scale, and recover from failure. With an integration platform on Azure you get idempotency, safe retries, API protection, traceability, and real-time flows that survive campaign peaks. The result is fewer incidents, shorter lead times, and better conversion when price, stock and promotions are always correct.

Why a direct integration can be a bad idea

“Let’s just wire the webshop to the ERP and we’re done.” In practice it becomes expensive, brittle, and hard to change. When prices, stock and orders must flow in real time — and traffic spikes during campaigns — you need a platform, not a point-to-point hose. Here’s what an Azure platform gives you and why it matters.

The problem with direct integrations

A direct integration is often a coded sequence: receive, transform, send. It lacks queues, backoff/retry, idempotency, strong authentication and traceability. When something fails (ERP timeout, network glitch, duplicate webhooks) you neither know what happened nor how to recover without duplicates. Meanwhile the requirements keep growing: new marketplaces, new attributes, new payment flows, new regulations. Every change becomes a release — with operational risk.

What an integration platform on Azure actually solves

Think of the platform as a layer between systems: identity at the edge, queues in the middle, rules as configuration, and observability end-to-end. The outcome is robustness and control — not just more code.

• Idempotency & queuing: Service Bus/Event Grid ensure “the same order twice” doesn’t create two orders. You can retry safely and stay in control during peaks without losing messages.

• Security & access: API Management acts as a gatekeeper with OAuth2/JWT, key rotation via Key Vault, and Managed Identity instead of shared secrets.

• Monitoring & traceability: Application Insights/Log Analytics provide end-to-end tracing (correlation IDs), alerts and KPIs so you see root causes — not just symptoms.

• Change velocity & flexibility: rules, mappings and channel-specific fields are configuration. You can add attributes or partner requirements without rebuilding.

• Real scalability: Functions/Logic Apps scale with load (Black Friday) and cost less in low season. No over-provisioned servers.

Idempotency: safety in a world full of duplicates

In a direct integration, “try again” equals “send again”. If the order already exists you create duplicates. The Azure pattern is different: every event gets an idempotency key, is handled via a queue, and is checked before it’s written. Retries are normal — not risky. During incidents you can re-process without corrupting data.

Security: identity first — never hard-code secrets

Ad-hoc links often hide API keys in code or env vars that never rotate. That will bite you. With API Management at the perimeter you enforce strong auth, request signatures and (when needed) mTLS. Key Vault manages keys/certificates, and Managed Identity lets services talk without shared secrets. Add private endpoints so internal resources aren’t exposed to the internet.

Monitoring: from “it’s broken” to “this policy blocked a bad payload”

Without a platform you only see “something failed”. On Azure, every call gets a correlation ID that follows the journey: API edge → transformation steps → ERP call. Dashboards show per-step latency, error types per rule version, and dead-letters in queues. You quickly see whether it was a schema issue, a partner sending duplicates, or an ERP timeout.

Example: Black Friday without heartburn

Campaign starts at 00:00. Price rules and the campaign flag are already in configuration. The API edge validates signatures and idempotency; the price change is published to feed/API within the same minute. If the ERP responds slowly, events are buffered in a queue and processed without loss. Bad payloads go to dead-letter with a clear reason and can be fixed and replayed — no manual export/import or nightly batches.

The economics: less firefighting, faster revenue

Direct integrations sound cheap — until you count hand-holding, troubleshooting, late campaigns, and returns from incorrect information. A platform reduces “ops debt”: fewer hidden minutes per order, fewer emergency stops, better conversion when price/stock/promo are correct in real time. You pay for usage, not for oversized servers.

When is a direct link acceptable?

Small, one-off flows with low business impact and no real-time needs can justify a simple link. But as soon as it touches orders, price, stock, returns or promotions — what the customer sees and what affects revenue — a platform is the right path.

Minimum requirements if you still consider “direct”

• Idempotency keys and safe retries (no duplicates on re-run)

• A perimeter with strong authentication and signature validation (not just a shared key)

• End-to-end traceability with correlation IDs, plus alerts on dead-letters/timeouts

How to start — without big-bang

Begin with a priority flow: often price/promo → Merchant Center or order → ERP. Put it behind API Management, route via Service Bus, and control rules as configuration. Measure before/after on three points: correctness at click (price/stock), time from change to published flow, and MTTR during incidents. When those curves move the right way, scale to more channels and partners.

Conclusion

A direct integration is fast to build and slow to own. An Azure platform gives idempotency, security, monitoring, and a rate of change that matches e-commerce reality. That lowers operational stress and cost per order — and lifts revenue when everything is correct in real time. To see it in practice, start with one flow, measure the effect, and scale what works.