When it comes to third-party integrations, Acumatica and Dynamics SL take two very different approaches.

Acumatica
• Broad Integration with 127+ Third-Party Applications: Acumatica’s Marketplace offers access to a vast array of over 127 third-party applications, covering a wide spectrum of industries such as retail, finance, manufacturing, healthcare, and more. This ecosystem allows businesses to easily find and integrate the tools that meet their specific needs, whether for CRM, tax compliance, e-commerce, or supply chain management. From small businesses to large enterprises, Acumatica’s expansive marketplace ensures that there’s a solution for virtually every business requirement.

• Seamless Integration via Modern Connectors: Acumatica supports modern integration methods like RESTful APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) platforms, which streamline the process of connecting with external systems. These technologies allow for secure, real-time data sharing between applications, which enables businesses to synchronize operations across various departments. The cloud-based architecture of Acumatica enhances this connectivity, ensuring smooth, fast, and scalable integrations.

• Compatibility with Leading Tools: Acumatica’s ecosystem allows businesses to seamlessly connect with widely used platforms like Salesforce for CRM, Avalara for tax automation, and Shopify for e-commerce. This compatibility ensures that businesses can extend Acumatica’s capabilities to better manage customers, automate taxes, and run their online storefronts without switching between systems or manually transferring data. For example, a company using Shopify can integrate it with Acumatica to automatically manage inventory, sales orders, and customer data in real-time, significantly reducing manual data entry and improving operational efficiency.

• Quick Deployment with Minimal IT Involvement: Acumatica’s Marketplace eliminates the need for heavy IT involvement in setting up integrations. Pre-built connectors simplify deployment, allowing businesses to add new applications or tools quickly and efficiently without complex coding or extensive technical support. This “plug-and-play” approach helps businesses rapidly adapt to changing needs, scale operations, and respond to new market opportunities without delays.

• Scalability and Flexibility: As businesses grow, they can continue to add more third-party applications or services from the Marketplace to enhance their system. Whether it’s adding new e-commerce platforms, automating accounting workflows, or integrating advanced reporting tools, Acumatica’s flexible architecture ensures that businesses can scale their technology stack without constraints. This adaptability is especially important for businesses in dynamic industries that need to respond to technological advancements or customer demands swiftly.

Dynamics SL
• Customization-Heavy Integrations: Unlike modern cloud-based ERP systems like Acumatica, Dynamics SL is a legacy, on-premises solution that often requires extensive customization to integrate with third-party applications. This customization is necessary because the system lacks native support for modern connectors like RESTful APIs, which are now the industry standard for seamless, real-time data integration. As a result, integrating with external tools—whether for CRM, e-commerce, or other business needs—typically demands more manual intervention and specialized development work.

• SQL Scripts and Manual Workflows: Integrating third-party apps in Dynamics SL often involves writing SQL scripts or creating manual workflows to exchange data between systems. This reliance on structured queries and database-level adjustments means that businesses need skilled IT personnel or external consultants to handle integration tasks. For instance, when setting up an integration between Dynamics SL and a cloud-based platform, developers might need to manually write queries to extract, transform, and load (ETL) data, which can be time-consuming and prone to human error. The process may also involve managing various databases and ensuring that the integration logic is correctly implemented.

• Increased Labor Intensity: Due to the lack of modern integration tools, implementing new integrations or maintaining existing ones in Dynamics SL tends to be labor-intensive. Each time a new third-party application needs to be connected, the IT team must get involved, manually setting up the integration, testing workflows, and troubleshooting any issues that arise. This dependency on technical resources can slow down deployment times, increase operational costs, and delay the ability to react to changing business needs. In contrast, modern systems like Acumatica enable “plug-and-play” integrations that can be implemented much faster and with fewer technical hurdles.

• Limited Flexibility for Expanding Business Needs: Dynamics SL’s aging infrastructure struggles to provide the flexibility needed to easily scale or adapt to evolving business requirements. As new cloud-based tools and technologies become available, businesses running Dynamics SL may find it difficult to integrate these tools without undergoing significant development projects or even migrating off the legacy system altogether. In contrast, Acumatica’s cloud-native system easily adapts to new technologies, ensuring businesses can stay up-to-date with the latest advancements without the need for constant custom development.

• Manual Data Handling: In some cases, where integrations are not feasible or would be too complex to implement, businesses using Dynamics SL may resort to manual data handling—exporting data from one system and importing it into another. This introduces risks of data entry errors, duplicate records, and operational inefficiencies, as it requires ongoing human intervention. Over time, this can degrade data quality and slow down critical processes, such as financial reporting or customer relationship management.

• High Maintenance Costs: The reliance on custom-built integrations and manual workflows increases the overall maintenance burden for Dynamics SL users. Each time there’s a system update or an integration needs to be modified, IT teams must revisit the custom scripts or workflows, often re-testing them to ensure they function properly with the new system configurations. This not only increases IT workload but can also lead to higher costs over time, as businesses must allocate significant resources to keep the system functioning effectively.

While Dynamics SL’s legacy infrastructure offers limited native integration capabilities and requires heavy customization for third-party app connections, modern solutions like Acumatica provide much more flexibility. Acumatica’s cloud-based architecture and native API support make integrations faster, easier, and less reliant on technical expertise. This allows businesses to adapt more quickly, reduce the cost of IT involvement, and minimize the risks associated with custom-built integrations. For more information on Acumatica, please visit our website or contact us at info@polaris-business.com.