DataBridge

DataBridge operated a 12-year-old on-premise ERP system that stored critical business data — inventory, orders, customer records, and financial transactions. Over the years, the company adopted Salesforce for CRM, Shopify for e-commerce, and HubSpot for marketing, creating five disconnected data silos.

A team of three full-time data entry clerks manually transferred data between systems. Orders from Shopify were re-keyed into the ERP. Customer updates in Salesforce were emailed to the ERP team. Inventory counts were exported as CSV files and imported nightly.

Data inconsistencies were constant. The ERP showed different inventory counts than Shopify, leading to overselling. Customer records diverged across systems, causing duplicate communications and billing errors. The nightly batch sync meant decisions were always based on stale data.

We mapped every data flow between the five systems, documenting 47 distinct integration points. We categorized each by criticality (real-time, near-real-time, batch) and direction (bidirectional, one-way). This integration map became the architecture blueprint.

Rather than replacing the ERP — a multi-year project the company could not afford — we designed an API gateway layer that sits between all systems. The ERP exposes data through a thin REST adapter we built; modern systems connect through their native APIs.

We chose an event-driven architecture using RabbitMQ for message queuing. When data changes in any system, an event fires, the gateway transforms it, and routes it to all subscribers. This decoupled approach means adding a new system takes days, not months.

The API gateway normalizes data formats across all five systems. A unified data model maps ERP part numbers to Shopify SKUs to Salesforce product IDs, maintaining referential integrity across the ecosystem.

Event routing rules ensure data flows to the right systems at the right speed. Inventory changes sync in real-time (under 30 seconds) to prevent overselling. Financial transactions batch every 15 minutes for ERP processing. Marketing data syncs hourly.

A real-time sync dashboard shows data flow health across all integrations. Operators can see message queues, sync latency, error rates, and retry counts. Automated alerts fire when sync delays exceed configurable thresholds.

Webhook orchestration handles complex multi-step workflows. When a Shopify order arrives, the gateway creates an ERP order, reserves inventory, updates Salesforce opportunity status, and triggers HubSpot post-purchase automation — all within seconds.