When the ERP and the website disagree, pick one to be right.
Three systems, three versions of every order, and someone in finance reconciling them by hand. Why the answer is rarely a new platform.
October 20262 minute readRevenue Systems
Three truths
The website quotes one lead time. The ERP has another. The CRM does not know the customer has already ordered. Nobody has done anything wrong. The ERP was chosen for the plant, the website was built by an agency, and sales adopted the CRM on its own. Each is fine alone. Together they produce three truths, and someone in finance spends a morning a week picking one.
Most companies that have grown past a few sites have some version of this. It shows up as small things first.
- Quotes sent with lead times the plant cannot meet
- Marketing spending against a customer list sales never updated
- A Monday report that is already a week old when it lands
Why a new platform is the wrong first answer
The first proposal on the table is usually to replace everything with one system. It is the answer that sells best. It costs a year, retrains every team, and very often ends with the same three problems living inside one vendor instead of three.
The systems are rarely the problem. The problem is that nobody decided which one is right.
When two systems disagree, pick one to be right. Everything else reads from it.
The one-direction rule
For a company that makes or moves product, the system that is right is almost always the ERP. It is where the orders, the stock, and the money actually move. So the rule is simple: the ERP is the source, and everything else reads from it. The website does not get an opinion about lead times; it shows what the ERP says, within minutes. The CRM does not keep its own copy of an order; it shows the ERP’s.
Data that moves in one direction is easy to reason about. When a number is wrong, there is one place to fix it. Two-way syncs sound more complete, and they are where most integration projects go to die.
What it takes
Less than people expect. One integration, built in your own accounts, with an owner and an off switch. The hard part is not the code. It is the data: plants that share an ERP rarely share a naming habit, and part numbers that look the same are not. Start with the messiest data, not the cleanest.
The question to ask
Before you accept a proposal for a new platform, ask one question: which of our systems should be the one that is right? If nobody in the room can answer it, that is the work, and it is a far smaller job than a new platform.
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Revenue Systems & Data
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