As e-commerce operations accelerate the growth of online stores, a frequently invisible problem has directly impacted sales: the lack of integration between essential systems. These include items such as the ERP, the CRM, and the sales website itself, whether it's the brand's own site or a marketplace. According to experts, this technological fragmentation prevents companies from having a complete view of the customer, reducing efficiency and harming conversions.
Commonly, digital retailers use multiple independent systems. The ERP, for example, controls inventory and finances, the marketplace centralizes sales, and the CRM manages customer relationships. In practice, the same consumer may exist in three distinct databases, none of which provide a complete view of their journey.
This leads to serious consequences such as:
- multiple duplicate databases;
- lack of consistency in information;
- inappropriate and generic campaigns;
- failures in the customer experience;
- loss of commercial opportunities.
Automation as a solution to integrate ERP, CRM, and marketplace
According to the study Customer Experience Automation Impact Report from ActiveCampaign, 95% of growing companies state that automation platforms enable them to achieve results impossible to obtain manually, precisely by eliminating data fragmentation. The automation platform functions as a central hub, connecting different points of the e-commerce operation. This makes it possible to adopt much better-integrated multichannel strategies, which can offer up to 250% more campaign engagement, according to ActiveCampaign.
Another attractive point of this type of tool is that integrating systems no longer requires lengthy IT projects. The most modern platforms have made this process more accessible by offering native connectors, code-free integrations, intuitive setup assistants, and complete libraries of ready-to-use integrations — allowing companies of all sizes to unify their operations quickly and efficiently.
Thus, projects that previously took months can now be completed in weeks. In practice, retailers can already implement basic integrations on their own, while specialized consulting firms accelerate more advanced processes.
