Sales to delivery
Closed deals in the CRM create projects, accounts or orders in the systems that deliver them.
(05)Service
05 / 07
Make disconnected systems work as one.
We connect your CRM, ERP, store, payment provider and internal tools so information moves between them reliably — and you find out quickly when it doesn't.
(01)The problem
The cost of systems that don't talk
When systems don't share data, people do it for them: exporting, re-entering, reconciling. Records drift apart, nobody is sure which system is right, and every new tool adds another copy of the same information.
Orders, contacts or invoices are re-typed from one system into another.
Two systems disagree, and someone has to work out which is right.
An integration “usually works”, and nobody notices when it stops.
Connections built in a hurry years ago, that nobody wants to touch.
Every new tool means another manual process.
(02)The service
What integration involves
An integration moves data or actions between systems: a new order in the store becomes an invoice in accounting; a deal closed in the CRM creates a project in the delivery tool. Most modern software exposes an API for this. Older systems may need files, database access or a custom adapter.
The connection itself is usually the easy part. The real work is deciding which system owns each piece of data, how changes flow in each direction, and what happens when something fails halfway — because with enough volume, something will.
We design integrations to be observable and recoverable: every exchange is logged, failures are retried safely, and a person is told when something needs attention.
Direct connections or a central layer?
Integration architecture is a trade-off between speed now and order later.
| Direct connection | Central integration layer | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Two systems and one simple flow | Several systems sharing the same data |
| Setup | Quick | More design up front |
| When a system changes | Each connection is updated separately | Updated in one place |
| Visibility | Spread across connections | One place to monitor every flow |
(03)Use cases
Typical integration work
Orders to finance
Store orders, payments and refunds flow into accounting without re-entry.
One view of the business
Data from several systems feeds a dashboard or warehouse using one set of definitions.
Replacing manual bridges
Spreadsheets and copy-paste routines between systems become automated, monitored flows.
(04)Specializations
What it covers
Each area below sets out the problem it addresses, representative capabilities, an example and the outcome we aim for.
01
Third-Party API Integration
Connecting your systems to outside services through their APIs.
- Problem
- Every provider's API has its own authentication, limits, data formats and quirks.
- Capabilities
- Authentication and token management
- Requests that respect rate limits
- Data mapping and transformation
- Handling provider changes and new versions
- Example
- A booking platform connects to a calendar provider, refreshing access tokens before they expire and slowing down automatically when the provider's rate limit is reached.
- Intended outcome
- Connections that keep working as usage grows.
02
CRM & ERP Integration
Keeping customer, sales, stock and finance data consistent between your core systems.
- Problem
- The CRM and the ERP each hold part of the truth, and people reconcile them by hand.
- Capabilities
- Customer and account sync
- Quote-to-order and order-to-invoice flows
- Product and price list sync
- Rules for records edited in both systems
- Example
- When a deal closes in the CRM, the customer and order are created in the ERP with the agreed prices, and the order's status flows back to the CRM for the account manager.
- Intended outcome
- One customer record, consistent across sales and finance.
03
E-commerce Integration
Connecting stores and marketplaces with stock, fulfillment, accounting and marketing.
- Problem
- Orders, stock and customer data must move between the store and every system around it, quickly and correctly.
- Capabilities
- Orders to fulfillment and accounting
- Stock and price sync across channels
- Customer data to marketing tools
- Returns and refund flows
- Example
- Orders from the online store and a marketplace flow into one fulfillment queue, and stock updates on both channels as items ship.
- Intended outcome
- Accurate stock and orders wherever you sell.
04
Payment & Billing Integration
Connecting payment providers to your product, store and accounting.
- Problem
- Payments involve money, retries and edge cases where mistakes are expensive.
- Capabilities
- Payment provider integration
- Handling payment events from webhooks
- Charges and refunds that are safe to retry
- Reconciliation with accounting
- Example
- The provider sends the same payment confirmation twice. The duplicate is recognized by its event ID and ignored, so the customer is charged and credited exactly once.
- Intended outcome
- Payments recorded once, and books that match the provider.
05
Communication Platform Integration
Connecting email, SMS, chat and telephony to the rest of your systems.
- Problem
- Customer conversations happen in tools that don't know who the customer is or what they've bought.
- Capabilities
- Email and SMS sent from your systems
- Chat and call events recorded in the CRM
- Notifications in your team's chat tool
- Consent and unsubscribe handling
- Example
- When a support ticket is resolved, the customer gets a text, the conversation is logged on their CRM record and the account manager is notified in the team chat.
- Intended outcome
- Every conversation connected to the right customer.
06
Database & Data Integration
Moving and syncing data between databases, warehouses and applications.
- Problem
- The data needed for reporting or operations is locked in separate databases and spreadsheets.
- Capabilities
- Extract, transform and load pipelines
- Incremental sync of changes
- Loading a data warehouse
- Data quality checks
- Example
- Each night, data from the operational database, the CRM and accounting is loaded into a warehouse. Checks flag missing or out-of-range values before the reports refresh.
- Intended outcome
- Reporting data that's complete, current and checked.
07
Webhooks & Event-Driven Systems
Systems that react to events as they happen, instead of checking on a schedule.
- Problem
- Checking for changes on a schedule is slow; webhooks are fast but can arrive late, twice or out of order.
- Capabilities
- Webhook receivers with signature verification
- Deduplication and ordering
- Event queues that feed several systems
- A scheduled fallback for critical flows
- Example
- Incoming webhooks are verified, stored and acknowledged at once, then processed from a queue — so a slow downstream system never makes the sender give up.
- Intended outcome
- Real-time updates without lost or duplicated events.
08
Internal System Integration
Connecting your own applications, including older ones without modern APIs.
- Problem
- Internal systems were built at different times and don't share data easily.
- Capabilities
- Adapters for older systems and file exchanges
- Internal APIs between services
- Single sign-on across internal tools
- Shared reference data
- Example
- An older inventory system that can only export CSV files gets an adapter that picks up each export, validates it and publishes the changes to the systems that need them.
- Intended outcome
- Older systems take part without having to be replaced first.
09
AI & Automation Integration
Connecting AI services and automation platforms safely to your business systems.
- Problem
- AI tools and automations need your data — with control over what they can read and change.
- Capabilities
- Connecting language models to internal data
- Connectors for automation platforms
- Narrowly scoped access for AI tools
- Logs of what AI tools read and produce
- Example
- An AI assistant gets read-only access to the product catalog and order status through a narrow internal API, instead of direct access to the database.
- Intended outcome
- AI and automation with the data they need — and nothing more.
10
Integration Reliability & Monitoring
Making existing integrations dependable, and knowing when they aren't.
- Problem
- Integrations fail quietly, and the problem surfaces days later as a missing order or a wrong report.
- Capabilities
- Health checks and alerts
- Holding queues for failed messages, with replay
- Reconciliation reports between systems
- Runbooks for common failures
- Example
- A daily check compares orders in the store with orders in accounting, lists any that are missing, and lets someone resend them in one step.
- Intended outcome
- Problems found quickly by your team, rather than weeks later by a customer.
(05)In practice
One order, four systems
What a single online order touches — and how each step is protected.
- 01
Order placed
A customer pays in the online store, and the store sends an event.
- 02
Received
The event is verified, stored and acknowledged, then queued for processing.
- 03
Recorded
The customer and order are created in the ERP, and an invoice in accounting.
- 04
Fulfilled
The warehouse gets the order. When it ships, tracking flows back to the store and the customer.
- 05
Retried
If accounting is unavailable, the step is retried later without creating a second invoice.
- 06
Reconciled
A daily check confirms every order exists in every system, and flags any that don't.
Illustrative. The systems and flows depend on your setup.
(06)Implementation
Designing a reliable integration
Data ownership
For each piece of data we agree which system is the source of truth, and what happens to edits made elsewhere.
Authentication
Credentials are stored securely, tokens are refreshed before they expire, and each connection gets only the access it needs.
API limits
Rate limits, pagination and missing endpoints shape the design. We check them early, against the real API.
Synchronization
Real-time events, scheduled syncs or both — chosen by how fresh the data must be and how each system behaves.
Maintainability
Field mappings and rules are documented and kept in one place, so changing a field doesn't mean hunting through scripts.
(07)Quality & reliability
Built to fail safely
Safe retries
Temporary failures are retried with increasing waits, and idempotency keys stop retries from creating duplicate records or charges.
Nothing lost
Messages that keep failing are held, with the error, until they're fixed and replayed.
Consistency checks
Regular reconciliation compares systems and reports differences, instead of assuming they match.
Monitoring and alerts
Volumes, errors and delays are tracked, and a named owner is alerted when something needs attention.
(08)Related work
Related work
Client projects, and concept builds where they're labelled as such.
(10)FAQ
Questions about API & Integration
Often, yes — through file exports, database access, email or a custom adapter. It's less tidy than an API, so we'll explain the trade-offs before building.
Platforms suit common connections and modest volumes. Custom code suits complex logic, high volume, unusual systems or strict data requirements. Many setups use both.
The integration waits and retries. Messages are queued instead of lost, and if the outage lasts, the right person is alerted.
By agreeing which system owns each record, matching on reliable identifiers, and making every operation safe to repeat.
Yes. We start by mapping what exists and adding monitoring, so we can see what actually fails before we change anything.
Through regular reconciliation checks that compare systems and report differences, alongside monitoring of every flow.
(11)Contact
Map the systemsyou have.
Tell us which systems you use and where information gets stuck between them. We'll suggest how to connect them, and what to watch out for.
contact@overc.io