As B2B eCommerce accelerates, manufacturers and distributors face urgent demands for real-time, consolidated system integration. Modern APIs and unified platforms are key to overcoming legacy challenges, enabling seamless operations and enhanced customer experience.
For manufacturers and distributors, the frustration of B2B integration is a familiar tale—manual re-entry of orders from email to ERP, outdated stock data on commerce platforms, and finance teams grappling with mismatched invoices and missing documents. Meanwhile, IT departments are burdened with maintaining fragile connectors that quickly break whenever a partner adjusts their data format. These inefficiencies might once have been manageable in a predominantly offline sales era. However, as B2B eCommerce accelerates, such integration gaps become significant barriers to growth. Buyers now demand precise, real-time digital transactions that are interconnected across all systems. Consequently, firms must integrate legacy ERPs, procurement platforms, and logistics systems with modern digital channels, or risk being left behind in the ecommerce surge.
Integration, however, is commonly misunderstood as mere connectivity between systems. The real challenge is consolidation. Every new tool, acquired subsidiary, or partner connection adds layers of complexity. Industry data highlights this sprawling problem: Okta’s Businesses at Work 2025 study found companies use an average of 101 applications, increasing annually, while MuleSoft’s Connectivity Benchmark reports enterprises managing nearly 900 applications on average, with 45% running over 1,000. Nearly all IT leaders acknowledge that integration hurdles are impeding AI adoption. This underscores that unless integration projects double as opportunities to retire redundant processes and consolidate overlapping systems, complexity will only worsen.
The most forward-thinking B2B organisations now approach integration with clear goals: reducing manual tasks that drain staff capacity, enabling real-time visibility into orders, inventory, and documents, and strengthening data security and governance while unifying disparate tools. Without these outcomes, integration risks becoming an expensive exercise in wiring that fails to deliver business impact.
The implications of poor integration extend beyond back-office inefficiencies—they directly affect customer experience. Large order buyers expect seamless alignment across every transaction stage: online prices must match sales confirmations and finance invoices. Research by Gartner reveals 61% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free digital experience but report lower remorse when human assistance supports the digital journey. Delivering this requires airtight application integration and business process management, so customer-facing teams and buyers alike share common, up-to-date order histories, quotes, and invoices.
McKinsey’s B2B Pulse reinforces this point: companies providing consistent omnichannel experiences—across digital and human touchpoints—grow market share faster than those that don’t. Integration underpins this consistency, ensuring catalogues, inventory, pricing, and purchase orders flow seamlessly across systems to create a unified buyer journey.
The integration landscape has dramatically evolved from the days of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which, while foundational, imposed rigid data standards, costly networks, and brittle, point-to-point connections. Although EDI and managed file transfers remain relevant, they are increasingly unable to meet the demands of real-time, scalable, multi-region supply chains and diverse trading partners. Today, integration must support dynamic, secure, and real-time connection of business systems.
Modern integration tools include APIs and web services that facilitate live data exchange for pricing, availability, and order status. APIs have become the preferred data exchange method due to their support for seamless cross-platform communication. Integration platforms now offer centralised monitoring, data mapping, and transformation to translate varying data formats into standardised ones usable by multiple partners. For high-volume data like inventory or price lists, batch APIs allow efficient transfer without slowing supply chains. This modern approach transforms integration from a back-office concern into a critical enabler of digital consistency, error reduction, and operational efficiency across networks.
When integration transcends patchwork fixes to consolidate systems, the benefits to daily operations are clear. Sales reps at a regional distributor who once spent hours manually entering purchase orders now enjoy automated order flow directly into ERP and commerce systems, freeing time for customer engagement. Supply chain managers at a mid-sized manufacturer gain real-time inventory updates rather than relying on stale nightly data, improving responsiveness with trading partners. Finance teams at multilateral wholesalers acquire a single, reliable view of invoices, quotes, and orders across divisions, accelerating credit decisions and reducing disputes. These examples illustrate how effective integration reshapes workflows, accelerates decision-making, and enhances customer trust.
However, successful integration requires more than adding connectors; it demands platforms designed for openness, orchestration, and unification. Without this foundation, IT is left managing a sprawling, brittle connector ecosystem. Solutions like OroCommerce exemplify this approach by combining buyer-facing digital commerce with technical integration layers. Their API-first architecture connects ERP, PIM, WMS, payment, and tax systems using modern RESTful APIs and batch processing for large documents. Built-in CRM and workflow automation reduce tool proliferation, while multi-organization and multi-site capabilities support consolidated operations across regions or acquisitions. Strong role-based access and auditing ensure data security when documents traverse partner networks. By unifying commerce, CRM, and workflows, platforms like OroCommerce lessen integration overhead and provide IT the flexibility to connect to iPaaS, EDI hubs, or custom middleware, creating a stable foundation for scalable digital channels.
Industry insights also underline complementary advancements. The partnership between Effective Data and Cleo, for instance, demonstrates how combining cloud-native integration platforms with ERP and legacy system expertise can deliver robust, scalable supply chain integration—improving real-time visibility and accelerating partner onboarding in sectors from logistics to retail. Similarly, expert commentary highlights persistent challenges in B2B integration, such as lack of standardization, security risks, visibility limitations, and legacy system compatibility. Solutions include adopting modern platforms with real-time monitoring, leveraging AI-driven security tools, embracing cloud-native scalability, and consolidating data silos through middleware. Moreover, addressing human factors is crucial: managing change, securing employee buy-in, aligning workflows, and providing training to ensure successful adoption of new integration technologies all contribute to smoother digital transitions.
In sum, B2B integration is no longer just technical plumbing—it is a strategic imperative underpinning growth and competitive advantage. As MuleSoft’s research highlights, integration challenges hinder AI and digital transformations at many firms. Yet, when approached as a consolidation opportunity, integration liberates organisations from manual toil, creates real-time operational transparency, and establishes a single source of truth across customers, employees, and partners. Through deliberate integration strategies and unified platforms, manufacturers and distributors can move beyond merely participating in digital commerce growth toward leading it.
Source: Noah Wire Services
