The ERP Integration Audit: A 5-Step Framework to Stop Data Sync Nightmares

Your ERP-to-ecommerce integration is broken. You know it because orders get lost, inventory counts drift, and customer pricing shows up wrong. Here's a systematic audit framework to find the problems and fix them in 90 days.

February 6, 2026

You already know your ERP integration has problems. Maybe it’s the 3 AM phone calls about duplicate orders. Maybe it’s the weekly fire drill when a customer complains their negotiated pricing didn’t apply. Or maybe it’s the slow, creeping realization that your team spends 40% of their time fixing data instead of selling.

The question isn’t whether your integration is broken. It’s how broken, and where.

This framework is how we audit ERP-to-ecommerce integrations for B2B distributors and manufacturers. It’s the same process we use whether you’re running Epicor Prophet 21, SAP Business One, NetSuite, or something more exotic. The ERP doesn’t matter as much as the methodology.

Why Most ERP Integrations Degrade Over Time

Here’s something nobody tells you when you launch an ERP integration: the integration that works on day one will not work on day 365.

Your business changes. You add product lines. You acquire a company with different SKU conventions. A vendor changes their data format. Someone creates a workaround in the ERP that bypasses the integration. A developer quits and takes tribal knowledge with them.

Each of these introduces drift. And drift compounds.

The result is an integration that mostly works, except when it doesn’t, and nobody can predict when it won’t work. That unpredictability is worse than a clean failure. At least a clean failure you can troubleshoot.

The 5-Step ERP Integration Audit Framework

Step 1: Map the Data Flows (and the Actual Flows)

Start by documenting what should happen. Then document what actually happens.

For each major data type—inventory, pricing, orders, customers, shipments—answer these questions:

Which system is the source of truth?
How does data move from source to destination?
What’s the expected latency? (Real-time? Hourly batch? Daily?)
What happens when the sync fails?

The gap between “should” and “actually” is where your problems live.

What we typically find: The documented architecture says pricing comes from the ERP in real-time via API. The actual flow is: ERP exports to a flat file at midnight, a cron job picks it up at 2 AM, and the ecommerce platform imports it by 6 AM—unless the file is malformed, in which case it silently fails and yesterday’s prices persist.

Nobody documented the flat file step because it was a “temporary workaround” three years ago.

Step 2: Identify Your Failure Modes

Every integration has characteristic failure modes. The goal is to catalog them and understand their impact.

Common failure modes in B2B ERP-ecommerce integrations:

Silent failures: The sync reports success but data didn’t actually transfer. This happens when error handling is too aggressive (swallowing exceptions) or too lenient (not validating responses).

Partial updates: Some records sync, others don’t. Common when batch processes timeout or when source data has validation issues.

Sequence violations: Order updates arrive before order creation. Shipment notifications arrive before the order exists in the target system.

Duplicate records: The same order gets created multiple times because retry logic doesn’t deduplicate properly.

Stale data overwrites: An older timestamp overwrites newer data because the systems don’t coordinate on versioning.

For each failure mode, document:

How often it occurs (daily? weekly? monthly?)
How it’s currently detected (manual report? customer complaint? never?)
What’s the recovery process (manual data entry? reconciliation script?)
What’s the business impact (revenue loss? customer churn? labor cost?)

Step 3: Assess Your Observability Gap

Can you answer this question in under five minutes: Is the integration healthy right now?

If the answer is no, you have an observability gap.

Good integration observability means:

Dashboards that show sync status, latency, and error rates at a glance
Alerts that fire before problems cascade (not after customers complain)
Logs that are structured, searchable, and retained long enough to debug issues
Metrics on queue depths, processing times, and retry counts

Most B2B ecommerce operations have none of this. They have logs somewhere, but nobody knows where. They find out about problems when customers call.

Step 4: Calculate the True Cost

Integration problems have hidden costs. Make them visible.

Direct labor cost: Hours per week spent on manual reconciliation, data fixes, and firefighting. Multiply by loaded labor rate.

Opportunity cost: What could that labor be doing instead? Usually: selling, customer success, or process improvement.

Revenue leakage: Orders lost because inventory showed as unavailable. Customers lost because pricing errors eroded trust.

Customer service load: Support tickets caused by order status discrepancies, shipping errors, or pricing disputes.

Run this calculation for the past 12 months. The number is usually higher than anyone expects.

This becomes your business case for fixing the integration properly. “We spent $180,000 on integration firefighting last year” gets executive attention in ways that “the API is flaky” does not.

Step 5: Build a 90-Day Stabilization Roadmap

Now prioritize fixes based on impact and effort.

Quick wins (Week 1-2):

Add basic health check endpoints
Configure existing monitoring tools to actually alert
Document the actual data flows (not the aspirational ones)
Create runbooks for common failures

Foundation (Week 3-6):

Implement proper error handling with structured logging
Add idempotency to prevent duplicate records
Build a reconciliation process that runs automatically
Create dashboards for sync status and latency

Hardening (Week 7-12):

Address the top 3 failure modes identified in Step 2
Implement data validation at boundaries
Add circuit breakers to prevent cascade failures
Build alerting that catches problems before customers do

Not everything gets fixed in 90 days. But the goal is to move from reactive firefighting to proactive monitoring. You should be able to detect and fix problems before they become customer-facing.

When to Replatform vs. Stabilize

Sometimes the honest answer is: this integration can’t be saved.

Signs you should consider replatforming instead of stabilizing:

The integration was built on deprecated technology (nobody supports it)
The original vendor is gone and there’s no documentation
The architecture fundamentally can’t handle your current transaction volume
You’re about to change either the ERP or the ecommerce platform anyway

But replatforming is expensive and risky. Most of the time, stabilization is the right first step—even if you eventually replatform later. A stable integration gives you time to plan a proper migration instead of rushing it under pressure.

What Comes After the Audit

The audit gives you clarity. You know what’s broken, why, and what it costs.

What you do with that clarity depends on your situation:

If you have internal capacity: Use the roadmap to assign work. The audit document becomes the project plan.

If you need outside help: Use the audit to scope the work properly. You’ll get more accurate estimates because you’ve already diagnosed the problem.

If you need executive buy-in: Use the cost analysis to make the business case. Numbers talk.

Getting Started

You can run this audit yourself. It takes 2-3 weeks if you have access to the systems and the people who maintain them.

Or you can bring in outside eyes. Sometimes a fresh perspective catches things internal teams have normalized. (“Oh, that error always happens—we just ignore it.”)

Either way, the framework is the same. Map the flows. Identify failure modes. Assess observability. Calculate costs. Build a roadmap.

The alternative is continuing to fight fires. That’s your choice.

Ready to audit your ERP integration? We’ve done this for manufacturers and distributors running everything from Epicor to SAP to custom legacy systems. Request an integration assessment—we’ll map your data flows, identify your top failure modes, and give you a prioritized 90-day stabilization roadmap.