How Should a Business Connect Its Systems?
APIs, webhooks, scheduled sync and events. A guide to choosing the right connection pattern.
Modern businesses run several systems: CRM, website, ERP, accounting, messaging. The real value is not in any one of them, but in how they share information.
The problem
Disconnected systems force people to move data by hand. That creates delays, mistakes and a poor customer experience. The business pays for the same information in multiple places.
The engineering perspective
There are four common patterns for connecting systems:
- APIs: request/response interfaces for fetching or sending data
- Webhooks: one system pushes an event to another in real time
- Scheduled synchronization: periodic batch transfers between systems
- Event-driven systems: a central stream of events consumed by multiple services
The right pattern depends on how quickly data needs to move, how many systems are involved and who owns the data.
The practical approach
Start by defining the data that needs to move and the direction it should flow. Then choose the simplest pattern that meets the timing requirement. Add error handling, authentication and logging before going live.
When it makes sense
- Data is entered once and needed elsewhere
- A customer action in one system should trigger a response in another
- Reports depend on information from multiple sources
- The business is outgrowing manual data transfer
When it doesn't
- The integration is more expensive than the manual work it replaces
- Data ownership and privacy are not clear
- One of the systems is being replaced soon
Key takeaways
- The connection pattern should match the speed and direction of the data flow.
- APIs, webhooks, scheduled sync and events are not mutually exclusive.
- Error handling and authentication are non-negotiable.
- Start with the business data flow, not the technology.
What's the right next step?
Have systems that need to work together?