Not quite CERTAIN if this is the right subforum or not, but…

Have parachuted into a project, and I don’t know that folks have thought through some crucial bits – but I am certainly not expert enough to know for certain if we’re missing something important. (Neither are the other key players).

Essentialy, here’s the situation.

We will soon be abandoning our DOS-based back office system for a web-based one.

We currently interact with one of our key suppliers as such:
-   When we receive orders from our clients, we enter the order into our DOS system
-   Our supplier has a terminal at their location running our system
-   They run a download that pushes out our individual orders for their materials
-   Once they fulfill the order, they close it out in our system, which:
-   Uploads the supplier’s shipping charges onto our customers’ invoice, and
-   Once the supplier closes it, it’s ready to be caught in the next “invoice sweep” by our team

Almost concurrently with our switch away from our DOS system to the cloud, our supplier has moved all of its other clients to a webstore for order placement.

So, in a perfect world, what I’d like to do is:
-   When we enter information in our system, there’s a way to push the relevant information from our system into theirs
-   When they close it out in their system, it automagically pushes the relevant info back into our system so we can CREATE invoices, etc.

Obviously, we want to keep our resale price hidden from our supplier, and our internal cost hidden from our customer; otherwise, we could just give them passwords to our supplier’s webstore.

My problem is, I don’t even know how to begin to investigate how this handshake between our new system and theirs could even happen; is it feasible and affordable? What alternatives do I have?

Ultimately, my blue-sky goal is we key the order in one time and that’s that, until we deposit the check from our client.

So, I will take any and all suggestions:
•   Does anybody know anything about things like this?
•   Does anybody know who I can talk to to help?
•   I don’t even know what questions to ask!

Thanks!

(I’ve started talking to some of our supplier’s other customers, but we have a larger volume and more complexity than most, so it’s not really an apples-to-apples.)
Basically you're talking about "Systems Integration".  I can understand why you might feel like you're clutching at straws even knowing the right question to ask.  If you search for a specialist Systems Integration company, you'll find that you can pay quite a lot for this kind of service.  Only you can judge WHETHER the costs would be worthwhile.

With a few more specifics (exactly what applications will be involved?) it might be possible to give a clearer answer.

In my job, incidentally, I regularly create quasi-systems integrations, whereby I'm using lots of scripts to push and pull data to and from various different websites, adding additional functionality within a bespoke intranet.  That's probably how I'd tackle a problem like this personally.  To do that, you'd need a web design team that knew a lot about a technique called "screen scraping" and which had rock solid database skills.  If any of the applications involved have an API, the integration becomes easier.  (The trouble with screen-scraping is that when one of the websites changes, you have to respond very QUICKLY and update your scripts.)Thanks, Rob.

Money will definitely be an object here - we're a large enough customer that our CFO feels THEY should pay, our supplier feels that they hold enough of our IP that they can push back a bit... We'll need to integrate long before anyone figures out who should pay. Hence I've thrown myself in the middle to figure out if a solution even exists.

So we're basically talking about TWO systems, from what I can tell - their webcart and our back office.

If I ask simply, "what applications are involved", will I get a good answer, or will they follow up with narrowing questions that I can't answer (e.g., "do you mean the front end bifurcating application, or the one on the back stream that DOWNLOADS the antifallow?").

Is it also "what database does that application access?" (no pun on "access" intended!).

OUR system is based on/integrated with/running through SalesForce.com, if that helps any.

What's an API?

Thanks!Systems integration is agnostic about things like which database is in use, etc.  It boils down to "what inputs and outputs are available on each system" and "what messages need to be passed".

An API is an interface that a company offers to allow programmatic access to certain features.  E.g. Google Maps has an API that allows any web developer to make programmatic use of its mapping facilities.  Using APIs is much easier than Systems Integration, but where no APIs are available, you either have to redesign the systems or use S.I.

To clarify - you are only interested in the outside edges of the vendors' applications.  If they provide a web interface (and no other type of interface) you are looking at a web application.  But they may provide something more industry standard like EDI, EDIFACT and so on.So questions to the back office team may be:

"Do you have an API that outputs client-defined data?"
Followed by
"If another system was going to push data into ours, what would you need to integrate the data?"


And questions to ask the material supplier might be:
"If our system spit out certain pieces of data, what would you need to integrate that into your shopping cart?"
and
"If we wanted your ERM to tell our backoffice system an order is complete, how would it output that data?"


Thanks!

Yes, you're heading in the right direction.  You'll probably need some specialist assistance with this though.  The thing with Systems Integration is that an extremely wide knowledge is needed in many different fields - data manipulation, diverse protocols, database technology, comms, networking, error-handling, etc, etc.  The risk with DIY is that you will miss some "edge cases" that the experienced eye would not overlook.Yeah, I just need to get the dialog started to figure out if it's even worthwhile.

Thanks