How to Connect Your CRM and ERP

What a CRM and ERP integration actually moves

Sales lives in the CRM, while fulfillment, inventory and accounting live in the ERP. Without a connection, reps call the warehouse to ask whether an order shipped, finance rekeys new customers from a sales email, and nobody is sure which address is current. Tepia starts every CRM and ERP project by listing the specific moments where people copy data between the two.

The usual flows look similar from company to company, though the details never are:

• A won opportunity in the CRM becomes a sales order in the ERP, with line items, terms and a ship to address.
• A new account created in the CRM is checked for credit and set up as a customer in the ERP.
• The item master, stock levels and lead times flow from the ERP into the CRM product catalog.
• Order status, shipments, open balances and credit holds flow back to the CRM account.
• Returns and service cases link to the original order on both sides.

Manufacturers and distributors add contract terms, customer specific item lists and rebate programs. Tepia maps each flow with the people who touch it before choosing any tools.

Step by step: connecting your CRM and ERP

1. List the flows. Write each one as a sentence with a trigger, a direction and an owner, for example: when an opportunity is marked won, create a sales order in NetSuite.
2. Assign record ownership. Name the system of record for each shared entity. The ERP usually owns items, inventory, terms and financial status, the CRM owns leads, contacts and pipeline, and accounts are split field by field.
3. Match existing records. Clean duplicates and link accounts and items across systems with external IDs before the first sync, or the integration will create thousands of copies on day one.
4. Choose a pattern per flow. Use real time API calls or webhooks for orders and credit holds, scheduled batches for large catalogs, and change data capture where the ERP supports it.
5. Build the middleware. A small service between the systems handles authentication, field mapping, retries, rate limits and logging, so neither system calls the other directly.
6. Design error handling. Every failure goes to a queue with its payload and reason, alerts the right person and can be replayed after the fix.
7. Test real scenarios. Cover partial shipments, split orders, credit memos, merged accounts and a record edited in both systems at the same moment.
8. Roll out in stages. Start read only so reps see ERP data in the CRM, then turn on write flows once the mappings are proven.

Tepia often ships the read only stage in the first release, because it gives sales value before the riskier write flows go live.

Choosing a sync pattern for each flow

No single pattern fits every flow; each one gets the approach that matches its volume and urgency. Tepia uses this guide as a starting point.

Whole record bidirectional sync is the pattern Tepia avoids most. Two systems writing the same field always ends in a loop or a silent overwrite, so ownership is split field by field instead.

Middleware, connectors and the tools in between

Prebuilt connectors, Zapier or Make are fine for simple, low volume flows such as copying a new HubSpot company into QuickBooks, and Tepia recommends them when they cover the flow without workarounds. They struggle with multi line orders, custom objects, partial failures and the volume of a nightly item sync, and they rarely give operations a clear view of what failed.

For those flows Tepia builds a dedicated integration layer in Node.js or .NET on AWS or Azure. It keeps field mappings in code under version control, uses a queue so a slow ERP never blocks the CRM, logs every message with a correlation ID, and includes a small admin screen for replays. See middleware and integration layer development and our NetSuite integration work for more detail.

Systems Tepia commonly connects include:

• Salesforce, HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics 365 on the CRM side.
• NetSuite, Acumatica, Epicor, SAP Business One, Dynamics 365 Business Central and QuickBooks on the ERP side.
• EDI feeds, warehouse systems and ecommerce platforms that create the same orders.

How Tepia approaches CRM and ERP integration

Tepia applies its six phase process with sales, operations and finance in the room from the start.

1. Discovery: flow mapping workshops, an API and permission review for both systems, and a data quality check on accounts and items. Deliverables are an Investigation Summary, an Interview Summary and User Stories such as a rep seeing a credit hold before promising a ship date.
2. Design: a field mapping specification, an ownership matrix, the error handling design and wireframes of the CRM panels that display ERP data.
3. Development and Testing: an Alpha against sandbox instances of both systems, then a Beta in production with read only flows first, with test plans covering every scenario in step 7.
4. Training: sessions for sales on the new ERP panels and for operations on the error queue and replays.
5. Launch: initial record matching and backfill, staged activation of write flows, and support reps on watch through the first month end close.
6. Support: monitoring, issue resolution, mapping changes when fields are added and new flows as requests arrive.

Discovery generally runs 1 to 3 months, development and QA 2 to 6 months, and launch about a month, though a read only first release can arrive sooner. See our process and ERP integration services, or talk to Tepia about your systems.

Frequently asked questions