Business Central Integrations: Does the Bridge Exist?

A Bridge: Well-designed, well-built, and well-maintained. But what did it take to get to this point?

With the sky-rocketing success of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, I have assisted with the design and development of a significant number of integrations between Business Central and other applications. These integrations have included online ordering portals, logistics and transportation management systems, expense reporting solutions, payroll systems, e-commerce solutions, and even older in-house/legacy solutions.

The great news is that Business Central is a modern ERP solution fully equipped and supporting a virtually an unlimited ability to integrate with other solutions. Most newly built integrations rely on a technology generally referred to APIs, which is a form of real-time communication between two systems. Because of the success of Business Central and the ability for most modern systems to support the use of APIs, I have seen a significant increase in the number and types of integration requests for Business Central - including everything from e-commerce solutions, to shipping or logistics systems, to real-time pricing and inventory availability requests from a Sales Quote or Purchase Order page.

I have also seen a high-level of misunderstanding from ERP decision makers and end users regarding what is involved in deploying an integration when APIs are involved. For this reason, I am hoping that this post can clarify the level of work required to get two systems communicating with one another using modern API technology.

An integration can be very quick and easy to deploy if a complete and fully-tested integration has already been developed between Business Central and the other system. However, often a completed integration does not exist, and work is required in order to get the two systems to communicate. It is at this point where the misunderstandings typically begin, resulting in confusion regarding the true level of effort required to complete a new integration. Depending on the complexity involved, it could take hundreds of hours and months of time to complete a new integration. So, it is important to understand your starting point for completing the integration.

Let’s take a look a very simple analogy…

A body of water separating two pieces of land

The image above depicts a river with land on both its east and west banks.  If we wanted to send goods from one side of the river to the other side, it would be very difficult because there is no bridge connecting the two sides.

Two land masses prepared for a bridge to be built

This next picture above shows a roadway and bridge foundation on both sides of the river.  Even with this improvement, it would still be very difficult to send goods from one side of the river to the other side because there still is no bridge.

A completed bridge used to connect the two sides of the river

In this final picture above, we see a completed bridge that joins the two sides of the river.  It is only at this point can we safely and securely send the goods from one side of the river to the other.

But what did it take to get to this point?

First, the people on the west side of the river had to meet with the people from the east side of the river to agree on what type of bridge would be required.  Would goods need to be sent only from one side to the other, or would goods be sent from both sides – and would goods need to be able to be sent from both sides at the same time?  What volume of goods would be moving from one side of the river to the other to determine the strength and capacity of the bridge?  Would the bridge only be used to transport goods, or would it also serve as a means of transportation for people?  All of these structural and design types of questions needed to be defined and agreed upon up-front in order to make sure that the bridge architects would design a bridge that would meet everyone’s requirements and expectations. 

Second, everyone had to reach a consensus on who would construct the bridge once the design was complete.  The bridge would naturally benefit the people on both sides of the river, however, the people on the west side of the river asserted that they had already constructed a bridge foundation.  Therefore, the people on the east side of the bridge should be responsible for building the bridge and connecting it to their existing foundation, which they specifically designed for this purpose.  Likewise, the people on the east side of the river asserted that they had already constructed a bridge foundation, and therefore it is incumbent upon the people on the west side of the bridge to construct the bridge and then connect it to their existing foundation, which they specifically designed for this purpose. 

Finally, once construction was complete, everyone had to agree on who would be in charge of certifying and maintaining the bridge.  Who would make sure that goods continued to flow smoothly over the bridge, monitor the bridge for issues, and make repairs when necessary?

Sounds like a lot of work!

Now, using this analogy, let’s equate this to Business Central!  Let's pretend that there is an organization called Cronus Brewery, Inc. that currently has Business Central up-and-running and in use for tracking all sales, purchasing, inventory, production, and financial management activities associated with their beer brewing operation.  Cronus has recently initiated a new project to evaluate e-commerce solutions so that customers can place orders for their stores and restaurants online.  The ability of the e-commerce solution to integrate with Business Central is crucial for reducing or eliminating duplicate data entry and maintenance.

The first picture above (with no structures at all) represents the scenario where the required APIs do not exist in either Business Central or the e-commerce solution.  In this scenario, each system could possibly support the use of the technological tools to develop a modern integration; however, in order to successfully integrate the two systems, all aspects of the integration design, preparation, and development would need to start from scratch, including the development of the APIs.

The second picture above (with only the bridge foundations) represents the scenario where a set of APIs already exists in Business Central for integrating information such as Items, Customers, Ship-to Addresses, Prices, Sales Orders, and Shipment information.  But also, a set of APIs must exist in the e-commerce solution for integrating Items, Customers, Ship-to Addresses, Prices, Sales Orders, and Shipment information.  And even despite the existence of a completed set of APIs in each solution, the successful information flow between the two systems remains unattainable without additional development effort due to the specific data structures and logic included within each of the APIs. The only way no development work would be required was if each solution provider had developer a specific set of APIs just to work with that particular system (BC, the e-commerce system).

The final picture, with the completed bridge, depicts the fully integrated solution that allows data to flow freely between Business Central and the e-commerce solution through a single set of APIs developed to interface with the other application’s APIs.  This took collaboration between both solution providers to get to this point. When building a completed integration solution, determining which party would be responsible for integrating their existing APIs with the other’s existing APIs is crucial. Often, this process entails a substantial amount of work, and it’s not always evident who should shoulder the responsibility.  This is because each party can legitimately assert that they possess a set of APIs for integration, and the other party must establish a connection to utilize these APIs.

So, what does this all mean?  It’s simple: If you are using Business Central and are considering purchasing or deploying another application and would like these two systems to be integrated, the first question you need to ask is, “Does the bridge exist?”  The response you are looking for is something along the lines of “Yes, we have completed multiple integrations between our application and Business Central, and we will install this integration solution at the start of the project where you will see information flowing between the two systems.”  However, if the response is along the lines of “We have APIs and can integrate with any system that supports APIs”, it implies that they currently only have what is depicted in picture 2, and "all" you are responsible for is planning, designing, constructing, and maintaining the entire bridge!

Does the bridge exist?