Faster time to value: Rethinking ERP integrations
Picture this: you’ve got a long road trip ahead of you. The goal is to get to your destination as fast and safe as possible, so you decide to stick to the highways. After all, they’re designed to move large volumes of traffic efficiently. Back roads are also an option, but they’re slower and harder to navigate.
Today, many organizations are still using a back-road approach to ERP integrations. That is, one-off, customized integrations. Each connection is designed for a specific system, and while it’s effective in the moment, it often creates rigid architectures that are difficult to scale, costly to maintain, and slow to adapt as businesses evolve.
In a business ecosystem where speed, agility, and ROI matter more than ever, a back-road approach is no longer sustainable.
How one-off ERP integrations hold organizations back
ERP systems are the backbone of procurement and finance operations, connecting everything from invoicing and payments to suppliers and analytics. When integrations are built on customized connections, they can introduce friction.
Some challenges companies often experience with complex connections include:
- Long implementation timelines before value can be realized
- High dependency on IT resources for changes and updates
- Inconsistent data flows
- Limited flexibility when adding new partners or workflows
As businesses grow, so do these barriers. Every new ERP instance, acquisition, or process change turns into another integration project, slowing innovation and increasing cost.
A modern approach: Pre-built integrations for flexible connectivity
Instead of starting from scratch each time with ERP integrations, organizations are increasingly adopting pre-built, reusable, configurable integrations that can be deployed quickly and adapted as needs change.
This model delivers:
- Faster time to value with out-of-the-box connectivity
- Greater consistency and reliability across integrations
- Lower implementation effort and cost
- Flexibility to support both standard and complex use cases
When integrations are designed with out-of-the box capability, teams can onboard faster, automate more confidently, and adapt their technology stack to business demands.
In procurement and finance, this leads to faster invoice processing, improved payment accuracy, better visibility into spend and cash, and stronger supplier relationships.
Modern integration strategies keep both pre-built and custom integrations in your toolkit, not one or the other. Pre-built integrations accelerate time-to-value for more common, everyday workflows, while custom integrations address other unique business logic and specialized requirements. Organizations that maintain both capabilities can move quickly on standard use cases while preserving the flexibility to customize when needed.
Microsoft Dynamics 365: A key component
You cannot discuss ERP integrations without touching on Microsoft Dynamics 365. The cloud-based suite of intelligent business applications that combines Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to manage core operations has become a critical platform for many procurement and finance teams.
In an era of agentic business applications, the demand is high for fast, reliable integrations that support payments, data exchange, workflow automation, and provide real-time intelligence, without months of custom development.
For companies adopting D365, the ability to connect payments and procurement systems quickly isn’t just a technical benefit, it directly impacts cash flow and operational efficiency.
How Corcentric is expanding integration capabilities
Corcentric is committed to investing in the expansion of how customers and partners connect to our procurement and payments solutions, which is why we recently partnered with Workato, the leader in AI-powered integration and automation.
By incorporating Workato’s iPaaS platform into our technology ecosystem, Corcentric is adding pre-built, flexible integration capabilities alongside our existing highly customizable options, giving organizations more choice in how they integrate, whether they need speed and simplicity, deep customization, or a combination of both.
As part of the partnership, Corcentric is preparing to launch its first Workato-powered integration: a payments integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, helping organizations reduce implementation time and realize value faster.
Expanding Corcentric’s integration capabilities means expanding what’s possible for their customers – from accelerating ROI to simplifying operations – without sacrificing flexibility or control.
