A seamless ecommerce experience may feel simple to customers, but delivering it requires a complex network of business systems and data sources working together behind the scenes. When those connections break down, the customer experience can suffer in the form of inaccurate inventory, pricing errors, order issues, and fulfillment delays.
A strong integration strategy keeps those problems from reaching the customer while helping businesses automate more of the work happening behind the storefront. As organizations invest in AI and new digital capabilities, that connected foundation becomes even more important.
In this episode of the Lessons for Tomorrow podcast, Americaneagle.com’s Peter Gavrilos and Paul Scroggs join Rico Andrade and Artie Sharpe of Celigo to discuss how businesses can approach integration more strategically and build an ecommerce ecosystem that can adapt as their needs change.
For captions, click "CC" within the video player. To read the transcript of this episode, click the transcript link within the description of the video on YouTube.
The Technology Behind Ecommerce Is Becoming More Complex
Many ecommerce businesses have adopted a “best-of-breed” approach to their technology stack, choosing different solutions for different needs rather than relying on a single platform to do everything. Ecommerce platforms often sit alongside an ERP, PIM, order management system, payment provider, marketing technology, analytics tools, fulfillment partners, and other specialized systems.
Businesses also regularly add new tools or replace ones that no longer meet their needs. The more interconnected the technology stack becomes, the harder it is to make those changes without affecting something else.
“There are so many things going on under the hood, but the customer shouldn't know that that's going on under the hood. Things should be fast. Things should be fluid. Things should be clear.” — Paul Scroggs, Americaneagle.com
At the same time that ecommerce operations are getting more complex, newer integration tools are expanding who can do this work. Integration is no longer limited to specialized developers. People who understand business processes and have some technical knowledge can take on more of it themselves. That can help businesses move faster, but it also brings more people into decisions about how systems and data connect.
For business leaders, the goal isn't simply to connect every system in the technology stack. It's to create an ecommerce ecosystem that can change without every new tool or business requirement becoming a major technology project.
“So, I think now the question really becomes how fast you can plug in the next thing and then remove the thing that no longer meets your business needs.” — Artie Sharpe, Celigo
AI Is Changing What Happens Behind the Ecommerce Storefront
Many conversations about AI in ecommerce focus on what customers can see, from AI-powered search and product discovery to emerging agentic shopping experiences. But there’s another opportunity that can be just as consequential: using AI to improve the operations behind those experiences.
As ecommerce stacks become more interconnected, the ability to integrate systems quickly becomes a bigger part of how fast a business can adapt. AI is beginning to change that equation by helping technical teams build integrations, troubleshoot problems, and work through development tasks faster. Instead of every new connection requiring the same level of effort, AI can reduce some of the technical work involved in getting systems to communicate.
That has implications beyond developer productivity. If integrations become easier to build and maintain, businesses can have more freedom to adopt new technology without being constrained by the work required to connect it to everything they already use. The technology stack can evolve more closely with the needs of the business.
B2B Ecommerce Depends on More Complex Data Connections
B2B buyers increasingly expect the same ease and transparency they experience as consumers. But delivering that experience can be considerably more complicated. A B2C site might show the same product and price to every shopper. But what a B2B customer sees can depend on who they are and the specific relationship they have with the business.
Pricing tiers, customer-specific catalogs, exclusive products, inventory availability, purchasing permissions, and other account-level rules all depend on data that may live across multiple business systems. Data needs to flow seamlessly between those systems so each customer sees the correct products, prices, and options available to them.
That makes integration fundamental to the buying experience. Customers expect their ecommerce experience to be up to date and reflect the terms and information the business already has on file. For many manufacturers, distributors, and other B2B organizations, much of that critical business data ultimately leads back to one particularly important system: the ERP.
“The data needs to be there. A B2B buyer now expects the same product content, the same inventory visibility, same order information that they'll see on anything consumer facing that you have. That expectation transfer is real.” — Artie Sharpe, Celigo
Modernizing Ecommerce Around a Legacy ERP
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems often sit at the center of B2B operations, housing information ecommerce experiences depend on, including inventory, customer records, sales orders, and financial data. That makes the ERP important to ecommerce modernization, but it doesn't necessarily mean the ERP itself always gets modernized at the same time.
Replacing an entrenched ERP is a major undertaking. A business may have a clear need for a better ecommerce platform or other digital capabilities without being ready to take on an ERP migration as part of the same initiative. In those situations, the more practical path may be to modernize around the existing ERP, using integrations to connect newer technology with the system the business still relies on.
That requires looking beyond the immediate ecommerce project at hand. Businesses need to understand what data the ERP controls, which other systems depend on it, and how those connections will need to change as the technology stack evolves. New integrations should support the ERP that's in place today without unnecessarily tying other systems to it long term.
The goal is to avoid making the ERP a prerequisite for every other modernization effort. By planning integrations around both current and future needs, businesses can improve ecommerce now and leave themselves a clearer path to replace the ERP when they're ready.
Modernizing EDI Without Ignoring How B2B Actually Works
Some technologies remain part of the ecommerce landscape precisely because established business relationships still depend on them.
Electronic data interchange, or EDI, has been used for decades to exchange standardized business documents such as purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notices between trading partners. Despite its age, it remains an important part of how many businesses transact.
For companies pursuing broader modernization, that brings up an important point: modernization does not necessarily mean abandoning every longstanding technology.
The more pertinent challenge is preventing EDI from remaining isolated from the rest of the operation. EDI data can be transformed and connected with more modern systems, allowing established trading relationships to coexist with evolving ecommerce architecture. Modernizing EDI is therefore less about replacing the protocol itself and more about connecting it with the processes surrounding it.
This is particularly relevant in B2B, where long-standing customer relationships can impose practical constraints on modernization. A business cannot always change how it transacts when an important trading partner requires an existing process or standard. Integration provides a way to modernize around those realities instead of allowing them to stop progress entirely.
Make Integration Part of the Ecommerce Strategy
Integrations shouldn't be treated as individual technical projects. Businesses should plan how data moves across their technology stack and how new systems can be added or replaced without disrupting everything around them.
This approach becomes more important as AI and other technologies change how customers interact with brands. Enabling new capabilities will depend on having accurate data that can move easily between systems.
When systems and data sources are built to connect, businesses can respond to new opportunities without being held back by their existing technology.
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Connect with:
- Lessons for Tomorrow: Website // Twitter // Instagram // Facebook // YouTube
- Peter Gavrilos: LinkedIn
- Paul Scroggs: LinkedIn
- Rico Andrade: LinkedIn
- Artie Sharpe: LinkedIn
- Resources: Celigo - Website
About: The Lessons for Tomorrow podcast is centered around conversations between industry experts sharing insights from the past, to apply in the present, to achieve success in the future. This podcast is the "motivational poster" in your ear; each episode is centered around conversations which motivate you to tackle new initiatives at your organization. We will be talking with some of the best and brightest minds in technology and marketing and will hear from the experts themselves about their latest experiences, their most recent challenges, and the road ahead. Every episode has a different story, a different answer, a different approach.
