Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): A Checklist to Get Started

Calling all Shopify Plus merchants: Are you ready to take your enterprise business, planning, and operations to the next level with ERP? 

For those unfamiliar with the term, ERP refers to enterprise resource planning, where you integrate the systems and software currently handling all of your business processes — think manufacturing, inventory, sales, finance, HR, and procurement — into one well-oiled machine. For instance, you may use ERP to completely automate the entire pipeline from ordering to fulfillment, rather than hiring someone to manually update inventory numbers with every new order. 

With information flowing between various teams, systems, and software, ERP is the key to saving time and money, boosting your entire organization’s productivity, improving the customer experience, and ultimately increasing brand loyalty. If you’re a large-scale ecommerce brand (or hoping to become one soon), we can’t overstate the importance of creating a centralized ERP.

Some common ERP integration methods are:

• Custom integrations, where you build your own technology that connects API code with the ERP system you’re looking to integrate with. 

• Vendor-built or native integrations are out-of-the-box solutions that let you integrate directly with your Shopify store. 

• Integration platform as a service is a solution that lets you create processes that integrate with cloud-based applications without dealing with hardware. 

There’s one catch, though: Implementing ERP is not as easy as it sounds — it requires time and resources to integrate ERP with your business goals, structures, and existing data. Even for a seasoned entrepreneur, tackling this challenge of building your ERP system in a way that’s conducive to scaling can feel overwhelming. 

We’re here to make things easier with a guide to ERP integrations, starting with this checklist to get you organized. 

Last updated on January 25th, 2022.