OroCommerce NetSuite Integration: Connecting Your B2B Store to NetSuite

Summarize this article

NetSuite runs the finances, inventory and orders of thousands of mid-sized manufacturers and distributors. When those companies move their B2B sales online with OroCommerce, the integration between the two systems decides whether the platform saves time or creates double entry. Here is how an OroCommerce NetSuite integration works, and what to plan for.

What flows between OroCommerce and NetSuite

In most projects, NetSuite remains the system of record and OroCommerce becomes the place where customers order. Typical flows:

• From NetSuite to OroCommerce: customers and their sub-customers, contacts, item data and availability by location, price levels and customer-specific prices, order status, shipments and invoices.
• From OroCommerce to NetSuite: sales orders, new customer accounts and addresses, and payment information.

Product content often comes from a PIM rather than from NetSuite, since item records in an ERP are rarely written for buyers.

How to connect the two systems

NetSuite exposes its data through SuiteTalk web services (SOAP and REST), through RESTlets, which are custom endpoints written in SuiteScript, and through SuiteQL queries. On the OroCommerce side, the platform offers a complete API and an integration framework with message queues for asynchronous processing.

You can connect them in three ways:

• A direct integration between the two APIs, built and owned by your integrator. It gives full control over business rules.
• An integration platform (iPaaS) with prebuilt OroCommerce and NetSuite connectors, configured for your processes.
• A prebuilt connector from a software vendor. Check carefully how it handles your pricing and customer structures before you commit.

NetSuite specifics to plan for

• Pricing. NetSuite combines price levels, quantity pricing and customer-specific item prices. Decide early whether OroCommerce receives calculated prices as price lists, or asks NetSuite for prices in real time at checkout.
• Customer hierarchies. NetSuite parent customers and sub-customers map well to OroCommerce customer accounts and subsidiaries, as long as roles and permissions are defined on the OroCommerce side.
• Concurrency limits. NetSuite limits the number of simultaneous web service requests per account. Synchronizations must be designed to respect these limits, especially during large catalog or price updates.
• Customizations. Most NetSuite accounts have custom fields, records and scripts. The integration has to account for them from the start.

Example: Cambium Networks

Cambium Networks, a global provider of wireless networking solutions, relied heavily on its NetSuite ERP for its digital operations. With Synolia, Cambium built CPOP, a distribution platform on OroCommerce that streamlines ordering for its distributors worldwide. At its core, CPOP features bi-directional integrations with Cambium’s key business systems, including the ERP and the subscription management platform, and runs under the same single sign-on as Cambium’s other applications.

Common pitfalls

• Choosing real-time synchronization everywhere, when nightly updates are enough for some data.
• Leaving data ownership unclear: each field must have one master system.
• Forgetting error monitoring. When an order fails to reach NetSuite, someone must know within minutes, not days.

Integration is often the largest line in an OroCommerce budget, as we explain in our article on what drives the cost of an OroCommerce implementation.

Planning an OroCommerce NetSuite project?

Synolia is one of OroCommerce’s founding SI partners and has delivered dozens of OroCommerce projects, most of them connected to an ERP. Our team in Santiago, Chile works on US business hours, in English and Spanish. Talk to our team about your NetSuite integration, or read more about our approach to ERP integration.