Sooner or later, you will find software or an online service that does something you really need, and need it to talk to your Epicor Kinetic system.

We have built and support connections between Kinetic and

webshops
factory and warehouse machines and systems
carrier and delivery systems
dedicated CRMs
print management
document management and automation
address verification
our own add-ons

Some of these, such as a Magento integration and dedicated DPD connection, have been running for close to ten years at the time of writing. It's more common that requirements or the external software change than the integration needs attention.

And here's another example: a complex logistics system.

The gap between "can connect" and "integrated"

Most things don't connect to Kinetic natively. The system provider may make it sound trivial, and sometimes it may be, but often they just know it's possible in principle and haven't looked at the particular needs of a Kinetic ERP, which are detailed and require specific knowledge.

Epicor will point to Automation Studio, which is great and very powerful. But it has a correspondingly high licensing commitment, and still needs you to create and manage the integration once you have it.

What's needed for an integration

Integrations need certain things, and the factors that affect how it's done are, broadly:

What the data exchange is like. How much is moving, how often, because a few a day and thousands an hour are different problems.
Which side is in charge. One-way or both ways, which drives the process, and how immediate it has to be.
How to deal with different assumptions. Any significant system interaction will find that the two are based on different ways of dealing with something they both have in common, and that will need bridging work. It's not unusual for two products to have different definitions of a customer, for example.
What happens when something breaks or doesn't work. Two systems are double the chance for one of them to have trouble, and the connection is another. So sensible design allows for that and makes sure an error in one place never stops your business.

That last point is the most commonly overlooked, because we all hope things don't go wrong, but it's the one experience tells us is usually the difference between something you rely on for years, and something you give up on.

What you get from a META eight integration

They survive upgrades. We build using upgrade-resilient methods, so they don't add to Kinetic update worries.

Failure management is built in. Where appropriate, integrations store their state, retry safely, and record and alert on failures rather than simply stopping or silently losing data.

They are supported. When something changes or there's a problem, you have one person who knows what's going on you can call, not a ticket queue. And they're documented well enough that you should rarely need to.

No unnecessary ongoing licence. We don’t introduce a separately licensed integration platform unless the requirement calls for one. Where a direct integration is the right solution, you pay for building it rather than continuing to pay for the means of running it.

We aren't committed to a particular integration product or method. Depending on the requirement, the right answer might be Kinetic's REST APIs, Epicor Functions, a lightweight external service or queue, direct API-to-API communication, scheduled processing or an integration platform. We use what the job needs and have experience of each.

We will tell you if you don't need us

The first step, since every integration is different, is advice. And we're happy if it ends at that.

Tell us what you need to connect and the specifics, and we'll tell you what it'll realistically take. If it will work out of the box, we'll say so. And if Automation Studio looks like the best option we'll say so, whether you want help with that or not. We've been building these since before META eight existed, which means we mostly know what's going to be involved without a full investigation.

The Integration Assessment

If you want more, we can provide a fixed-price assessment: a pre-implementation report that covers the approach, the options, the risks, and what it will cost to put in place.

You own that report. If META eight then carries out the work, its cost is credited against the implementation.

Integration assessments start at £700. Where there's a need for more extensive investigation, we'll agree an assessment scope and price with you first.

There's no standard price for the integration work, because there is no standard integration. The integration assessment gives you a price before you commit.

Talk to us first

The initial discussion is free.

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