A guide to Magento integration for SAP Business One

Post By Charlie Heywood on November 1, 2016

A guide to Magento integration for SAP Business One

If you’re a traditional retailer and new to ecommerce, you’ll probably eventually find yourself in a position where you need to upgrade your backend systems. The difficulty of having to manage stock across channels, get products to customers on time, and keep your prices and product information up to date can otherwise put a lot of pressure on your margins and customer satisfaction.

One option is to use SAP Business One, which is a popular ERP solution for small businesses. And, if you’re a user of Magento – “the fastest growing and most widely used commerce platform in Europe”, according to Magento’s own research – it’ll only take you a couple of minutes in Google to find out that you can integrate the two solutions with each other.

However, a successful integration isn’t just about the mechanics of getting Magento and SAP Business One to talk to one another – you also need to think about how your business works now, what you want to achieve, and how to make the most of your relationships with your SAP and Magento partners.

We recommend you start by looking at the following factors:

Are your business processes fit-for-purpose?

Implementing ERP is a big commitment – you need to make sure you don’t build it on the wrong foundations, and the move to ecommerce may mean that some of your ingrained business processes need to change.

As such, we recommend conducting a comprehensive business process review before making any changes to your backend systems – particularly if you’re undertaking something as big as an ERP implementation.

Which Magento integration method will you choose?

There are three main ways to integrate Magento with SAP Business One:

You can purchase SAP Business One and Magento as a pre-integrated package.
You can use a pre-existing integration solution developed by a third party.
Your SAP partner can create custom code to integrate SAP Business One with Magento.

The best method for you will depend on your business and what you want to achieve – something that your SAP partner can help you evaluate. However, we recommend that you try to steer away from custom development work, as it’ll mean you’ll be reliant on the partner who created the code for support and maintenance. It may also make the software trickier to update.

Who’ll help you when things get tough?

It’s inevitable that with new software comes a new set of contacts. You’re going to be working with at least two software providers – specifically, a SAP Business One partner and a new or existing web developer.

When something goes wrong, whether it’s a small issue or a much bigger problem, it’s critical that you know who to turn to. In times of crisis, you don’t want to waste time jumping between your contacts to work out who should deliver support (because it could either be a problem with the website or SAP Business One) – instead, your providers should be willing to work together and decide who’ll provide first-line support for any problem.

Want to learn more about the finer details of ecommerce integration for SAP Business One? Read our five-minute guide.