Software & Applications · Service 11

Make the tools you already pay for talk to each other.

Most businesses do not have a software problem. They have five pieces of software that each work fine and none of which know the others exist — so somebody re-types an order into the accounting system every afternoon. Integration removes that person from the loop without removing the checks that make it safe.

Mapped and documentedRetries and idempotency MonitoredFails loudly, not silently
Describe the systems → See a real mapping
Different shapes · one format

The actual work

Integration is mostly translation

Two systems rarely agree on what a customer is. One splits the name, the other does not. One stores tax inclusive, the other exclusive. Choose a pairing to see what the mapping really looks like — including the fields with nowhere to go.

The difference between working and reliable

Every integration fails eventually

The question is what happens next. A script that assumed everything would work loses data quietly; a properly built integration notices, recovers and tells someone. Pick a failure and compare.

Where it usually starts

The connections businesses ask for most

Nearly always the same handful, because they are where duplicated typing concentrates.

Money

Store to accounting

Orders, refunds and payouts landing in QuickBooks or Xero with the right tax treatment, so reconciliation stops being a monthly ordeal.

Sales

Forms to CRM

Enquiries arriving as records with their source attached, rather than as emails somebody has to re-key before anyone can follow up.

Stock

Inventory to storefront

Live stock levels from a warehouse or ERP, so the site stops selling things that ran out on Tuesday.

Delivery

Orders to shipping

Labels, tracking numbers and delivery notifications flowing both ways between your store and the courier.

Scheduling

Bookings to calendars

Two-way sync with staff calendars, including the awkward parts — cancellations, reschedules and double-booking prevention.

Marketing

Customers to email platform

Segments that reflect what people actually bought, kept current automatically and respecting consent.

Questions

System integration, answered

Can I just use Zapier or Make instead?
Often, yes — and if one of them handles your case, use it. They are excellent for straightforward, low-volume connections. Custom integration earns its cost when the mapping needs real logic, when volume makes per-task pricing expensive, when you need proper error handling and audit trails, or when one of the systems has no connector.
What if one of our systems has no API?
There is usually still a way — a scheduled export, a database connection, or in stubborn cases a file drop. These are less elegant and need more care around timing and duplicates, but plenty of reliable integrations run on exactly that. We will tell you honestly if a system is genuinely closed.
Should data sync one way or both ways?
One way wherever you can live with it. Two-way sync means deciding what happens when the same record changes in both places at once, which is a genuinely hard problem. We start by asking which system is the source of truth for each field — often the answer removes the need for bidirectional sync entirely.
How do we know it is still working?
Monitoring is part of the build, not an extra. Failed operations are retried, persistent failures raise an alert, and there is a log showing what synced and what did not. An integration that fails silently is worse than no integration, because you trust data that stopped updating three weeks ago.
What happens when a vendor changes their API?
It happens, usually with notice and occasionally without. Integrations are built defensively so an unexpected field does not crash anything, and contract tests catch shape changes early. Ongoing maintenance is worth budgeting for — this is one of the few things that genuinely needs looking after.
How long does an integration take to build?
A simple one-way sync between two systems with good APIs can be a week or two. Anything involving two-way sync, unusual tax handling or a system without an API takes longer — mostly in mapping and testing rather than writing code. The discovery step is where the real estimate comes from.