Data Integration FAQ: Timelines, System Changes, Historical Data and Reconciliation

Preface

These are the six questions asked most frequently in pre-sales and kickoff meetings for integration projects. Answers reflect general engineering practice from our ERP, e-commerce and supply-chain integrations; specific projects still depend on an assessment of the actual systems involved.

Q&A

1. How long does it take to integrate one system? Three tiers. When a mature connector exists (mainstream ERPs, e-commerce platforms, WMS products), a single pipeline such as order sync can go live in 1–2 weeks, with most effort going to field-mapping confirmation and joint testing. When the platform has open APIs but no ready-made connector, expect 3–6 weeks. Legacy systems with no API at all require solving the data-egress problem first and run in months. What actually drags timelines is never the development — it's business-semantics alignment and joint-test scheduling on both sides.

2. Our legacy ERP has no open API. Can it still be integrated? Yes, with trade-offs. Common paths, in priority order: direct database reads (read-only views — extract only, never write), intermediate tables or file exchange (the legacy system exports Excel/CSV on a schedule and the platform picks it up), and RPA as a last resort (simulating human operation — fragile but non-invasive). Any non-API approach needs an explicit assessment of stability and vendor-support boundaries, plus a migration path to a formal API later.

3. Should historical data be migrated, and how? Migrate selectively, in windows: financially open orders, currently listed products and active customers must move; fully closed documents from three years ago can usually stay archived for reference. Migration runs as time-windowed batches with resume capability during off-peak hours, followed by full reconciliation of record counts and key amounts.

4. How low can sync latency go? It depends on the platform's capability, not the integrator's will. Platforms with webhook push achieve end-to-end order-change latency of seconds to one minute; polling-only platforms are bound by API rate limits, so a 5–15 minute cycle is the common configuration. For latency-sensitive scenarios such as oversell prevention, confirm the platform's push capability during solution design.

5. What if data turns out inconsistent after go-live? Not "what if" — it's planned for: core pipelines ship with scheduled reconciliation jobs that auto-classify differences (sync lag resolves itself, deterministically fixable gaps get automatic compensation, conflicts go to humans), and any time window stays re-runnable. Consistency is operated, not accepted at go-live.

6. If we switch e-commerce platforms or ERPs, does integration start over? Not with iPaaS. The connector model confines platform differences inside the connector; business pipelines (field mappings, transformation rules, scheduling) only need their mappings adjusted for the new platform. One retail customer switched e-commerce ERPs with master-data and order pipelines cut over within a week, using a two-week parallel run for a smooth transition.