The Challenge
A regional manufacturing company was running three separate systems for inventory management: a legacy ERP system from the early 2010s, a warehouse management tool, and a procurement spreadsheet maintained by the purchasing team. None of these systems talked to each other.
The result was a daily ritual of manual data reconciliation. Warehouse staff would count inventory, enter it into the WMS, then email updates to the procurement team, who would manually update their spreadsheet and cross-reference with the ERP. Discrepancies were discovered days, sometimes weeks, after they occurred.
Our Approach
Rather than ripping out and replacing the legacy systems (which would have been prohibitively expensive and disruptive), we built an integration layer that connected all three systems into a single source of truth:
- API Bridge: Custom middleware that translates data between the legacy ERP's proprietary format, the WMS REST API, and the procurement team's structured data needs.
- Real-Time Sync: Event-driven architecture ensures that when inventory changes in any system, all other systems reflect the update within minutes.
- AI Reconciliation: Machine learning models continuously compare data across systems, automatically resolving minor discrepancies and flagging significant ones for human review.
The Technology
The integration layer runs on Azure Functions with event-driven triggers. We used a message queue architecture to handle the different update frequencies of each system. The AI reconciliation engine was trained on 12 months of historical discrepancy data to learn common error patterns.
Results
- 3 systems unified: Legacy ERP, WMS, and procurement now share a single source of truth
- 89% less manual data entry: Staff time redirected from data entry to exception handling and strategic procurement
- Same-day accuracy: Inventory counts now reconcile within hours instead of weeks
- $180K annual savings: Reduced carrying costs from overstock situations caused by data lag
What This Means
Legacy systems don't have to be a barrier to modernization. With the right integration approach, businesses can preserve their existing technology investments while gaining the real-time visibility and automation capabilities they need to compete.