BigCommerce Epicor Eclipse Integration: Methods, Benefits, and Real-World Examples

Operational efficiency is always worth investing in. And one way to optimize your business processes is to bridge the gap between your Epicor Eclipse ERP and BigCommerce platform.

Your systems should work together seamlessly, not function as disconnected silos. Here’s all you need to know about how to make that happen:

Methods Of BigCommerce Epicor Eclipse Integration

When it comes to integrating BigCommerce with Epicor Eclipse, you have two main options. Your choice depends on how much control you want over the process and how much effort you’re willing to invest.

1. In-House API Integration 

If your business has specific, custom requirements, and you have an experienced in-house tech team, you can opt for API integration. This method allows you to build a direct connection between BigCommerce and Epicor Eclipse, ensuring full customization based on your exact needs.

However, there are a few things to consider before taking this route:

• Complete Customization: You have full control over how data flows between your systems.
• Adaptability: You can modify the integration as your business grows or changes.
• High Costs: Hiring developers or maintaining an in-house team for integration is expensive.
• Time-Consuming: You’ll need to manage the entire process, troubleshoot issues, and handle ongoing maintenance.
• Technical Responsibility: You (or your team) are fully responsible for handling errors, updates, and future enhancements.

If you prefer full control and have the budget, this could be the right choice. But if you want a hassle-free solution, there’s a better way.

2. Using Middleware for a Simplified Integration

If you don’t want to deal with the complexities of in-house development, a middleware solution is the best option. Middleware like DCKAP Integrator acts as a bridge between BigCommerce and Epicor Eclipse, enabling seamless data flow without requiring technical expertise from your end.

• No Technical Hassles: The integration is managed by a dedicated service provider, so you don’t need an in-house team.
• Cost-Effective: Compared to building an integration from scratch, using middleware saves time, resources, and money.
• Faster Implementation: With pre-built connectors and expertise, service providers can get your integration up and running quickly.
• Ongoing Support: Any technical issues or updates are handled by the provider, ensuring long-term efficiency.

Instead of worrying about the technical hassle, debugging errors, or spending months on development, you can simply hand over the task to a trusted middleware solution like DCKAP Integrator and focus on growing your business.

Later in this blog, we’ll explore how DCKAP Integrator helped one of its clients successfully integrate BigCommerce with Epicor Eclipse, making their operations more efficient and error-free.

Also read: WooCommerce Epicor P21 Integration: An eCommerce Guide to Getting Started

Steps to Integrate BigCommerce with Epicor Eclipse

Once you know the different approaches available, the next step is to choose the one that fits your business best. Look at your internal resources, project timeline, budget, and how much ongoing technical work your team can take on. Once you have made that decision, you can move forward with the implementation.

1. Audit and Standardize Master Data

Get your data ready. Before connecting the systems, make sure your B2B data is clean and clearly mapped between Eclipse and BigCommerce.

• Middleware: Share your business requirements, data definitions, and edge cases with the vendor. The vendor handles the data mapping and builds the required schemas.
• In-House: Your team audits the database fields and maps SKUs, UOM conversions, parent-child customer accounts, and contract pricing rules.

2. Set Up System Access and Credentials

Connect the systems. Both systems need the right permissions and credentials for secure two-way communication.

• Middleware: Provide the vendor with the required BigCommerce API credentials and Eclipse Web Services or EBridge access. The vendor sets up and validates the connections.
• In-House: Your team configures the required API listeners, BigCommerce OAuth tokens, staging servers or ODBC access, and secure network connections. Test the connections to confirm that both systems can communicate with the required permissions.

3. Configure B2B Business Logic

This is where you set the rules for things like high-volume orders, customer-specific pricing, inventory availability, and credit checks.

• Middleware: Review and validate the pricing, inventory, and credit-check rules configured by the vendor.
• In-House: Your team builds the data transformation logic, pricing lookups, and error queues for order exceptions.

Run sample data through the integration and make sure the output matches the requirements of the destination system.

4. Set Up Webhooks and Event Schedules

Automate your data flows. Some information needs to move in real time, while other data can be updated on a schedule.

• Middleware: The vendor sets up real-time order webhooks and scheduled syncs for larger data sets, such as pricing and inventory.
• In-House: Your team develops webhook listeners, event handlers, and scheduled jobs for automated batch syncs. Trigger a test event in BigCommerce and make sure the event is captured correctly in your transaction logs.

5. Test and Deploy to Production

Test before going live. Run the complete B2B order flow in a staging environment before switching to production.

• Middleware: Complete user acceptance testing (UAT) with the vendor. Once approved, the vendor deploys the integration and handles ongoing transaction monitoring.
• In-House: Your team tests edge cases such as credit holds, tax-exempt orders, and UOM mismatches, while also setting up transaction logging and monitoring.

Once everything is approved, switch the endpoints to production and start the live sync. Monitor the integration after launch and confirm that BigCommerce orders are creating valid sales orders in Epicor Eclipse without errors.

How Does BigCommerce and Epicor Eclipse Integration Impact Your Business?

Once BigCommerce and Epicor Eclipse are connected, your online store becomes a connected part of your distribution operations instead of working as a separate sales channel. For B2B distributors, this can improve day-to-day operations, the buyer experience, inventory management, and scalability.

Automated Operations and Labor Savings

With orders flowing directly from BigCommerce into Eclipse, your team does not have to manually enter every online order. This reduces repetitive work and the risk of errors such as incorrect SKUs, shipping details, or pricing. Transaction logs also give your team visibility into order issues, such as credit holds, tax exemption problems, or missing information, so they can resolve them faster.

Better B2B Buyer Experience

The integration can bring customer-specific pricing, account information, inventory, invoices, and shipment details into the online buying experience. Buyers can see the pricing that applies to their account, check product availability, place orders, and track shipments without having to contact your team for every update. Customer hierarchies, job-site addresses, and buyer permissions can also be reflected in the online ordering process.

More Accurate Inventory and Faster Order Cycles

Inventory data from Eclipse can be synced with BigCommerce based on your business rules, giving buyers a better view of product availability across branches. Once an online order is placed and validated, it can flow directly into Eclipse for fulfillment, helping your warehouse team move from order to picking, packing, and shipping with less manual work.

Scale Without Adding More Manual Work

As online order volumes grow, automation helps your team handle more transactions without increasing the same amount of administrative work. Connecting BigCommerce with Eclipse also brings online sales data and ERP data together, giving your teams a clearer view of customers, orders, inventory, and overall business performance.

What Can You Automate Between BigCommerce and Epicor Eclipse?

A successful B2B business handles hundreds or even thousands of transactions daily. Without automation, the team would just spend hours manually entering orders, updating stock levels, and fixing errors, time that could be better spent elsewhere.

When you integrate BigCommerce with Epicor Eclipse, you can automate these processes, ensuring that both systems work in sync. Here’s what you can automate:

• Order Processing: Orders from BigCommerce automatically sync to Epicor Eclipse, eliminating manual processes and reducing time, thereby enhancing the overall efficiency in order fulfillment. 

• Inventory Updates: If a product sells online or in-store, stock levels adjust in real-time. This prevents overselling, back orders, and inventory mismatches that frustrate customers.

• Product Data Syncing: Product descriptions, pricing, and categories stay updated across both platforms. This ensures that customers see accurate information, reducing pricing disputes and order cancellations.

• Customer Records: New customers who place orders on BigCommerce are automatically added to Epicor Eclipse, ensuring accurate records for invoicing, order history, and future marketing efforts.

• Shipping & Tracking: Shipping information and tracking numbers sync between systems, so customers receive updates without your team manually entering data.

• Pricing & Discounts: Special pricing, customer-specific discounts, and bulk pricing rules from Epicor Eclipse automatically reflect in BigCommerce. This prevents pricing discrepancies that can lead to customer frustration.

Also read: Epicor P21 Explained: Pricing, Features, Use Cases

Real-World Example: How HVAC Wholesale Direct Used DCKAP Integrator to Connect BigCommerce with Epicor Eclipse ERP

If your systems don’t talk to each other, inventory discrepancies, manual errors, and operational bottlenecks quickly become a costly challenge to deal with. HVAC Wholesale Direct avoided facing a similar challenge, by seamlessly connecting their online store with Epicor Eclipse ERP: all without delays or spending excessive resources on manual data entry.  

Here’s how they accomplished this with DCKAP Integrator.

The seamless integration was designed to automate five critical data flows: 

• Customer Sync: Ensuring customer data remains consistent across both platforms.
• Order Sync: Automatically pushing orders from BigCommerce into Epicor Eclipse.
• Product Updates: Syncing new product listings and updates from Epicor Eclipse to BigCommerce.
• Inventory Management: Keeping stock levels accurate in real-time.
• Real-Time Pricing Updates: Ensuring customer-specific pricing reflects correctly on BigCommerce.

As a result, their team could focus on business growth instead of handling repetitive tasks. Read the full case study here. 

Top ERP-First Integration Tool for B2B Businesses: DCKAP Integrator

While Epicor offers its own API, it has limitations when it comes to scaling your business. A middleware solution like DCKAP Integrator bridges this gap, allowing you to customize your integration with business logic tailored to your specific needs. 

DCKAP Integrator is a platform-agnostic tool, meaning it can automate data flows between multiple systems, including ERP, CRM, and PIM, ensuring seamless business processes. Here are a few key benefits you can expect: 

Multi-Platform Integration Made Simple

Automate integration tasks such as data mapping and synchronization, eliminating manual work so you can focus on your core business.

DCKAP Integrator’s advanced tools allow you to connect multiple DCKAP instances in a single workflow, all managed from one central dashboard. You can set up and run custom integrations without needing developer expertise or programming knowledge.

Two-Way eCommerce Communication With Bi-Directional Data Sync

Enable real-time data exchange between BigCommerce and Epicor Eclipse with just one click, eliminating the need for manual updates in each application.

This integration ensures both systems stay in sync, so you always know when orders are placed, when products are shipped, and more all without manual intervention.

Automation That Adapts to Your Business Logic

Schedule and automate complex data tasks that would otherwise require manual input, reducing the risk of human error.

DCKAP Integrator automates your business logic, ensuring that as soon as new information enters one system (such as a new order), it is instantly reflected in the other system. This keeps your operations running smoothly and efficiently.

Instant Data Synchronization & Self-Sustaining Scheduling

DCKAP Integrator is a developer-free, self-sustaining integration tool that allows you to create automated schedules and batch processes with ease.

Simply set up your schedules, and let the technology handle the rest, even for recurring tasks that require no human intervention. And these are just a few ways this ERP Integration tool can help you streamline your business operations. 

To know more about DCKAP Integrator, get in touch with us!

FAQs

What are the best practices for Epicor Eclipse BigCommerce integration?

Start by keeping Epicor Eclipse as the central source of truth for important business data such as products, inventory, customers, orders, and pricing. Clean and standardize your master data before starting the integration, clearly define which system owns each type of data, and map fields between Eclipse and BigCommerce. It is also important to use the right sync frequency, test different B2B scenarios before going live, and have proper transaction logging and error handling in place.

What are the common challenges of Epicor Eclipse BigCommerce integration?

Some common challenges include handling Eclipse’s MultiValue data structure, syncing customer-specific matrix pricing, managing inventory across multiple branches, mapping different Units of Measure (UOMs), and handling high order and product volumes. B2B account hierarchies, credit limits, tax rules, and fulfillment workflows can also make the integration more complex.

How can you solve Epicor Eclipse BigCommerce integration challenges?

The right approach depends on the specific challenge, but a middleware platform can help manage data mapping, transformation, business rules, error handling, and communication between Eclipse and BigCommerce. Keeping Eclipse as the source of truth, using delta or scheduled syncs where appropriate, and testing edge cases before launch can also help reduce integration issues.

Besides Epicor Eclipse, what other ERPs can integrate with BigCommerce Storefront?

Apart from Epicor Eclipse, BigCommerce can integrate with other Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems like Epicor Prophet 21, Sage, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, and SAP. 

What are the benefits of integrating BigCommerce with Epicor Eclipse?

BigCommerce Epicor Eclipse integration improves data management, financial management, data accuracy, and customer experience by ensuring real-time data synchronization of orders, inventory, and customer information. Organizations also gain the ability to automate workflows, reduce errors, and enhance scalability.

What should you consider before evaluating integration solutions?

When choosing the best solution for BigCommerce integration, consider factors like cost, flexibility, scalability, and ease of use. It’s also essential to ensure that the integration offers a user-friendly interface, supports seamless data exchange, and can handle common challenges like data mismatches and security concerns.