In today’s competitive business landscape, delivering exceptional customer experiences at every stage of the customer journey is essential. In fact, 59% of consumers now prioritize customer experience when choosing which brand to buy from. To meet these rising expectations, businesses rely on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems—earlier used mainly for back-office functions like accounting and finance.

But now, to provide a seamless customer experience, ERPs must work in tandem with customer-facing systems, such as e-commerce platforms, customer support tools, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. This requires a modern approach to ERP system integration, helping businesses break down silos, overcome challenges, and ultimately deliver better customer service.

This blog will guide you in creating a seamless customer experience from the ground up—starting with ERP. Let’s begin by taking a closer look at what ERP is all about.

What is an ERP system, or Enterprise Resource Planning?

Business management software called an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system aids in the automation of a company’s core operations. In many businesses, an ERP serves as the system of record that gathers data inputs from many departments such as manufacturing, accounting, supply chain, sales, and marketing, among others, to guarantee that the company’s data comes from a single source of accuracy. The terms “financial system” (financial reporting, invoicing, accounting,) and “ERP system” are frequently used interchangeably.

Accounting was ranked as the most important ERP function by 89% of survey participants. However, suppliers of integrated business software also provide a wide range of other modules, including customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI), supply chain management (SCM), omnichannel commerce, human resource management (HRM), and material requirements planning (MRP).

ERP integration linking to other applications and data sources a business utilizes is necessary to provide great customer experiences since an ERP system manages numerous client-facing tasks including orders, billing, fulfillment, and shipping.

ERP integration: What is it?

ERP integration, to put it simply, links and synchronizes ERP software with other programs and data sources. Whether the data comes from other systems or the ERP, it provides you with a unified picture of data in real-time across many platforms. Because ERP integration improves teamwork and efficiency across corporate operations, workflows, and procedures, it is critical to business operations.

Challenges arising from the absence of ERP integration

If your business does not have an ERP system integration in the present economic climate, you will encounter several obstacles that will hinder your capacity to compete.

Silos of Data

Businesses are unable to use the potential of their systems due to data silos. Older ERP systems may be housed in legacy, on-premises data silos, while more recent apps are hosted on the cloud. Inaccurate data, inefficiencies, and redundancies are caused by distinct data silos.

Sluggish Manual Procedures

You must use manual procedures to transfer data between the ERP and other systems if ERP system integration is not there. An order placed by a customer, for instance, is entered into a CRM. Operational efficiency suffers and the staff is burdened more if the order needs to be manually input into the ERP system. Higher-value jobs cannot be completed by the labor since they must undertake manual operations.

How to Connect an ERP to Other Systems

ERP integration issues are addressed by iPaaS solutions, which are intended to simplify integrations despite the existence of more traditional techniques such as point-to-point integration using custom code. iPaaS solutions are used for application integration, B2B ecosystem integration, data integration, on-premises integration, API publication, and other situations. Typically, they are developed on the cloud.

The foundation of most iPaaS systems is an API integration platform that offers workflow design, connection, data mapping, transformation, and integration lifecycle management. The majority link to customer support apps, CRMs, ERP solutions that are more widely used, and any proprietary systems that a business could have.

Although there are many different iPaaS solutions with a wide variety of capabilities, there are certain capability trade-offs. While some iPaaS solutions need IT to construct the interfaces themselves, others offer pre-built components to link corporate systems and automate business processes. Pre-built components in iPaaS systems make routine connections easier, but they might not be able to handle more complicated integrations.

Why Integrate ERP Systems with Aonflow?

The iPaaS solution from Aonflow provides both depth to handle complicated connectors and ease of use for simple integrations. The client Experience solution from Aonflow is made to speed up the automation of common business procedures and activities throughout the client relationship. Our solution utilizes best practices from hundreds of integrations, and it is built on the industry-leading iPaaS platform from Aonflow.

The customer experience solution from Aonflow includes a full lifecycle API Management tool along with the following features:

One Platform for Integration

Aonflow is built to simplify and standardize integration operations on different ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)s. Here’s how it achieves this:

Centralized API Integration Platform

The core of Aonflow solution is a scalable and reliable central repository for all integrations. This is a platform that can help manage the efforts of developers in tackling more complex integrations – whilst equally providing easy to create user interfaces where simple tasks need no coding at all.

Well-designed Integrated Platform

Aonflow’s platform provides a builder that is designed for advanced integrations, allowing to map complex workflow and exchange of data among several systems Examples for this are visual design interfaces and built-in templates that make the development of integration flows easier.