Understand integration
How data moves between systems in B2B commerce, who owns what, and how punchout works.
Three ideas carry every integration project. Pattern is how data moves: on a schedule, live on demand, or a deliberate mixture. System of record is which system is allowed to change a given field, which is the decision that determines whether your integrations cooperate or overwrite each other every night. Punchout is the outward-facing case: your catalog rendered inside a customer's procurement system, which is how you stay reachable for buyers who never visit supplier websites.
Read these before you connect anything. Every one of them describes a decision that is cheap to make now and costly to change after data is flowing.
- Integration patterns: batch, real-time and hybrid, and how to choose.
- Deciding your system of record: which system owns which field. Get this wrong and everything else fights.
- Punchout explained: OCI, cXML and openTRANS, selling inside your customer's procurement system.