Key Takeaways 💡
- ERPs like SAP, Oracle NetSuite, or Microsoft Dynamics weren’t built for multi-channel speed and complexity.
- Rebuilding ERPs for commerce creates delays, IT strain, and lost revenue opportunities.
- The winning model: ERPs remain the backbone while ChannelEngine acts as the orchestration layer for 1300+ channels.
- Guided integration, reusable frameworks, and custom API options reduce IT effort and accelerate time-to-market.
- Commerce teams gain agility while IT defines governance—turning ERP constraints into innovation foundations.
- With ChannelEngine, enterprises scale globally, ensure compliance, and maintain competitive advantage.
Enterprise commerce has entered a new era. The world’s biggest brands are no longer competing only on product or price, but on where and how they reach customers. Marketplaces, social commerce, and direct-to-consumer channels now account for a growing share of global retail growth.
Yet many enterprises are finding that the systems they’ve relied on for years - ERPs like SAP, Oracle NetSuite, or Microsoft Dynamics 365 - were not designed for the speed and complexity of selling everywhere at once.
The result? Costly IT projects, manual workarounds, and long delays to launch even a single new channel. In a commerce landscape that rewards agility, those delays can mean missed revenue and weakened competitiveness.
Why ERPs alone can’t carry the load
Enterprise ERPs remain critical as the backbone of ecommerce operations. They serve as the system of record for products, inventory, pricing, and financials. But when asked to stretch into multi-channel commerce, they show their limits:
- Time to market: Launching on a new marketplace can take months of custom development.
- Operational friction: Inventory sync issues or manual order routing slow down teams.
- Scalability gaps: Each new channel adds exponential complexity that ERPs weren’t built to handle.
Brands know they can’t afford to rip out their ERP, yet they also can’t afford to let it become the bottleneck to growth.
Rethinking the enterprise commerce model
The most successful enterprises are reframing the question. Instead of “How do we rebuild our ERP for commerce?” they ask: “How do we let our ERP do what it does best, while enabling scale outside of it?”
This is where a multichannel integrator like ChannelEngine becomes critical. By keeping the ERP as the system of truth and shifting channel-specific complexity into a specialized platform, enterprises unlock the ability to scale to hundreds of marketplaces and sales channels without overloading their core systems.
What “good” looks like: Flexible, guided integration
Integration is always the hardest part. Every enterprise backend is unique, every IT roadmap is full, and every delay costs money. That’s why how you integrate matters as much as what you integrate.
ChannelEngine has designed its integration approach to minimize risk and accelerate time-to-value through:
- Configurable ERP plugins that adapt to existing customizations in systems like SAP and Microsoft Dynamics.
- Reusable integration frameworks that have proven across years of enterprise deployments.
- Custom API options for when deeper tailoring is needed.
- Extensive documentation is available in the Developer Hub, enabling IT teams to move quickly.
- Guided onboarding led by specialists who align with your company’s integration launch process and requirements, supported by extensive resources in our Help Center.
This approach reduces the resources spent on integration projects and shortens the time to go-live.
- Jeremy Xia, CTO at Jessie Zhao
A strategic shift for IT and commerce leaders
- ERPs continue as the backbone: they continue to safeguard financials, master data, and compliance as the central system of record.
- ChannelEngine becomes the orchestration layer: managing the speed, complexity, and scale required to operate across 950+ marketplaces, social channels, and direct-to-consumer touchpoints.
- IT teams control without bottlenecks: instead of being pulled into endless custom projects, IT defines governance and guardrails while CE handles the heavy lifting of channel connectivity.
- Commerce teams gain agility: they can launch new channels quickly, adjust pricing dynamically, and scale globally without waiting on long ERP development cycles.
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This dual-layer model transforms the ERP from a constraint into a foundation for innovation. It protects the stability enterprises need, while unlocking the flexibility the market demands. For leaders, it’s a blueprint for future-proof commerce.
The bottom line
Enterprise leaders who are winning in the multichannel marketplace era aren’t rebuilding their ERPs. They’re rethinking their architecture to combine stability at the core with flexibility at the edge.
Ritu Bhargava, President and Chief Product Officer at SAP Customer Experience & Industries, adds:
This is where ChannelEngine stands apart:
- Enterprise-grade integrations with leading ERPs like SAP and Microsoft Dynamics, designed to adapt to your existing customizations.
- Proven onboarding and delivery that reduces IT strain and accelerates time-to-market.
- Global reach at scale with direct connections to more than 1300 marketplaces, social channels, and D2C platforms.
- Built-in security and compliance, including Single Sign-On (SSO), Access Management, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification.
With ChannelEngine, enterprises don’t just keep up - they gain a competitive advantage, turning their ERP into a foundation for innovation and their commerce strategy into a driver of profitable growth.
Talk to our enterprise experts today and unlock a faster, more flexible path to growth.
