Why ERP Implementation Matters for Growing Brands

The enterprise commerce firms are experiencing greater complexity in their operations and, therefore, implementing ERP is a big business decision. The Shopify’s guide for the year 2026 states that the median for ERP implementation projects is nine months. However, nearly one in four projects experience delays, which are caused by issues like poor governance, lack of standardization, and bad design choices. Gartner predicts that more than 70% of the ERP implementations will fall short of their intended objectives by 2027 and that 25% might experience severe failure.

ERP implementation is all about selecting and configuring the software, data migration and training users on how to use it. ERP integration is another process and it involves connecting the ERP to Shopify and customer relations platforms to ensure that data is transmitted automatically.

Five Core Stages of Implementation

The process typically includes five phases: planning, designing, configuring and developing, migrating and testing data, followed by launching and providing support after launching.

Commerce companies also have to decide which system should govern which kind of data. Inventories can be governed by a warehousing system, customer data by Shopify, product data by an ERP or product-information system, and order data by Shopify prior to its entry into ERP for fulfillment and accounting.

Shopify provides for a six-phased approach starting with the auditing of existing processes and identifying whether issues arise in ERP, commerce platform, processes or data. It is essential then to identify which system is responsible for the issue, choose the right architecture, data mapping and synchronization, conduct a pilot test and measure the outcome.

Shopify’s Role in a Unified Commerce Model

Shopify can act as the commerce layer, which is responsible for storefront, checkout, point-of-sale, business-to-business and customer accounts, while the ERP system handles financial and operational data. These two systems can be connected via direct connectors, integration platforms or custom APIs.

The examples below illustrate possible advantages of using both systems together. Good American managed to grow from $5 million to $100 million using Shopify with NetSuite, reducing inventory discrepancies by 65%. According to a study by EY quoted by Shopify, unified commerce with Shopify POS results in 22% higher total cost of ownership, 20% quicker implementation and 8.9% higher sales as compared to other companies.

Avoiding Common ERP Mistakes

Some of the key issues noted by Shopify include too much customizing, low partner accountability, doing too many things at once, poor data validation and depending too heavily on one big system. For example, Lidl canceled its SAP implementation project worth almost €500 million because of too much customizing, while the fast implementation of ERP system at Hershey led to poor order processing.

For a successful implementation, these are some of the important factors that need to be considered.