The seamless path from browsing into your Amazon account to buying and paying for the stuff is no accident. It’s the result of an integrated system that works behind the scenes.
When you browse and choose products, the connection between the storefront and inventory management guarantees that only in-stock items are shown as available. As you check out, the payment is processed almost immediately, thanks to integration between shopping cart software and payment gateways.
This process makes Amazon integration like this shape up the customer journey and make shopping on Amazon smoother.
What is Amazon?
Amazon is a multinational technology company based in the United States, best known as the world’s largest online retailer and one of the most influential companies in e-commerce and cloud computing.
Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an online bookstore, quickly expanded to sell a wide range of products, from electronics and clothing to groceries and digital content.
Today, Amazon has:
- Ships to customers in more than 100 countries and regions.
- Over 310 million active users worldwide.
- Around 9.7 million sellers worldwide, and 1.9 million of them are active on the marketplace.
- Over 600 million products are listed on the market, and 12 million of these items are sold by Amazon itself.
- Accounts for 39.6% of the US ecommerce sales market.
What is Amazon integration?
Amazon integration is connecting your Amazon store with other key business systems such as accounting, inventory management, CRM, payment gateways, reporting apps, and more. It helps all these systems to move together without manually moving a needle.
For instance, your customer places an order in your Amazon store. With Amazon integration, your stocks will get updated right away, the payment gets through your preferred channel smoothly, the shipping partner gets the order and your customer’s information is saved in your CRM. Everything happens automatically.
When you begin using Amazon integrations, you’ll realise how easy it is to streamline internal processes directly affecting Amazon stores and their customers. These integrations align data across e-commerce platforms, enabling smoother operations and more efficient business management.
Why integrate with Amazon?
Maintaining track of your sales and stock for your Amazon store is laborious and time-consuming.
Integrating Amazon with tools catering to specific departments and business needs means no manual rekeying of order information input. Any changes made in your Amazon store or on these apps get automatically updated on the other platform.
Automation brings ease and efficiency and eliminates any risk of failing Amazon’s non-compliance rules, which can result in fines of thousands of dollars for a major seller.
By integrating the business with Amazon, a company can enjoy the following advantages –
- Amazon makes it easier for new sellers with limited marketing budgets to build organic traffic. Thus, Amazon integration opens significant opportunities for retailers to increase their income.
- A company’s Shopify account can be linked to Amazon listings in any category they want. Amazon integration makes it easier for businesses to synchronize product information on Shopify and Amazon accounts.
- Amazon operates in multiple countries, giving businesses access to millions of international customers without having to set up regional operations. Integration makes cross-border selling easier with built-in tools for currency conversion, language, and compliance.
- Amazon provides detailed reports on customer behavior, sales performance, and inventory movement. With integration, businesses can sync these insights with their systems to improve decision-making, forecast demand, and optimize product listings.
- Since Amazon already provides these facilities, businesses can scale quickly without investing heavily in logistics, warehouses, or customer service infrastructure.
Features of Amazon integration
Selecting the right type of Amazon integration solution is critical for optimizing your Amazon store. To select the most suitable integration for your specific needs and situation, it’s important to keep several factors in mind.
Here are some key considerations:
Real-Time, Bi-Directional Data Sync
A real-time Amazon integration triggers updates instantly. That means any product changes in your ERP directly appear on your Amazon, while new Amazon orders are instantly captured in your back office.
You will also want a two-way sync. For instance, if you fix a product description in your ERP, it updates on Amazon. If you adjust your listings on Amazon, it flows that changes into your ERP.
Multi-Marketplace Compatibility (Amazon US, UK, EU, etc.)
If you sell across Amazon UK, US, EU, or more, you will want an app connector that merges them all.
A multi-region strategy lets you update data once and automatically sync it across all regions. This centralized setup saves significant time when scaling globally.
For instance, with APPSeCONNECT, a brand can update Amazon UK, DE, and FR directly from a single ERP, eliminating the need for manual, region-by-region data entry.
Custom Workflow Automation
Every business runs on its own processes. Whether it’s advanced shipping confirmations for Amazon UK or customized order flows to manage state taxes in the US, a flexible platform allows designing tailored workflows with minimal coding.
You can also set up rules for free shipping thresholds or special gift-wrapping requests. A strong solution adapts to new requirements as they come up without needing to rebuild everything from scratch.
For instance, APPSeCONNECT enables a BFSI retail brand to automatically split large Amazon orders across multiple warehouses, depending on stock availability.
Built-In monitoring, alerts & error handling
No system is entirely error-free, but a strong integration catches problems early. If a sync fails, you receive instant alerts and detailed logs, turning a potential crisis into a quick fix.
You can reprocess or correct data immediately with error snapshots, keeping operations smooth even during peak order volumes.
Amazon integration methods
Amazon offers several integration methods for sellers, vendors, and developers to connect external systems, automate processes, and manage data efficiently.
Each method serves a different business or technical need, from advanced APIs to simple file uploads and cloud-based solutions. These include:
Selling Partner API (SP-API)
The Selling Partner API (SP-API) is a REST-based API that allows Amazon sellers and vendors to access data on orders, payments, shipments, inventory, and other business information. The API supports building applications that automate Amazon business operations.
These are some of the top use cases of SP-API:
- Sales Overview: It generates dashboards that showcase regional sales, year-over-year sales, organic vs. inorganic sales, and best-selling products.
- Building P&L Dashboards: SP-API can be used to develop and automate profit and loss (P&L) dashboards, making it easier to track inventory, monitor sales insights, and manage returns.
- Inventory Analysis: Amazon vendors can also analyse the current availability of stock, evaluate overall inventory health, and track out-of-stock rates.
- Profit & Loss Statement: Lastly, sellers can see Amazon’s commission, taxes, promotion fees, shipping charges, etc. By subtracting these from net revenue, you can determine the operational, contribution, and net margin.
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) or Middleware
An iPaaS is a centralized hub for a smooth data flow between applications. It connects multiple applications, data sources, and services without heavy coding. iPaaS solutions typically offer a suite of templates and prebuilt connectors that reduce the complexity and time required to connect Amazon with other systems.
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solutions like APPSeCONNECT provide ready-to-use connectors with built-in functionality, including:
- Prebuilt integrations for leading ERP systems and Amazon Seller Central.
- Visual configuration tools that require little to no coding expertise.
- Built-in features for monitoring, error handling, and logging.
- Continuous updates to ensure compatibility with platform changes.
- A scalable architecture that supports increasing transaction volumes.
Unlike manual or custom-heavy integrations, it provides a low-code, scalable, and secure solution that accelerates digital transformation.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the preferred choice for document exchange, including invoices, shipment notices, purchase orders, and payment information between vendors and Amazon. This ensures streamlined and efficient information between Amazon vendors and Amazon.
Here’s a breakdown of this model:
- Vendors provide products to Amazon, and Amazon handles pricing, listing and fulfilment to end customers. Integrating Amazon Vendor Central with a seller’s business software enables smooth, two-way data exchange.
- Relevant data is then extracted from the seller’s system and sent to the Amazon marketplace; meanwhile, information such as sales orders is pulled from the store and synced with the company’s internal system.
- EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) enables this seamless transfer of business documents in a standardized digital format.
Flat File (CSV/XML) Integration
Flat File Integration allows sellers to upload large batches of product, inventory, and pricing data via CSV or XML files. Based on Amazon’s templates, these files can be prepared offline and uploaded through Seller Central or automated tools. This method is helpful for sellers who prefer bulk updates without programming and supports operations like catalog changes, price updates, and inventory management.
Amazon Integration scenarios
So, what are the different Amazon integrations?
You’ll be surprised to learn that dozens of Amazon integrations cater to specific departments and business needs. Sales, marketing, customer service, product management, and client engagement—you name it.
Here are the best Amazon integrations to add value to any online store:
Inventory management
Inventory management integrations provide e-commerce businesses with tools to track and manage inventory levels. It lets you adjust SKU quantities across all your sales and warehousing channels whenever a transaction occurs or new inventory is logged in.
Its key functionality includes:
- Real-time inventory tracking
- Low stock alerts
- Automated stock replenishment
- Supplier integration
- Multi-location inventory management
Payment Gateways
Payment gateway integration enables an online store to accept payments through various payment methods, including debit and credit cards, bank transfers, mobile wallets, and cryptocurrency. They employ security and encryption protocols like SSL and PCI DSS to safeguard transaction data.
Besides having pre-built payment processing gateways, Amazon also offers the option to build your own payment form to connect directly with our payment processing API. It’s called custom merchant page integration. With this approach, you create your own payment form to collect customer payment details, which are then sent directly to Amazon Payment Services for authorization.
Reporting and analytics
No Amazon campaign is as powerful as its measurement tools. By integrating reporting and analytics tools like Seller Central, Vendor Central, or Amazon Advertising with other systems like BI platforms, ERPs, and CRMs, you can check vital metrics such as conversion rates, website traffic, shopping cart abandonment rates, and customer behavior.
With all this information at your fingertips, you can make informed decisions that drive your business forward and enhance your customers’ overall marketing experience.
Customer service integrations
Customer service for ecommerce includes all interactions between a business and its customers. From pre-purchase enquiry to post-purchase support, it includes addressing customer needs, resolving issues, and providing assistance through various channels.
Customer service integration links your ecommerce platform to support tools like help desk software, live chat, and AI chatbots. By consolidating customer inquiries and sharing data across channels, the system gives your team a unified view of customer interactions and complete order histories.
Challenges of Amazon integration
From technical difficulties to concerns about data management, Amazon integration comes with a set of challenges:
Data silos and incompatibility
When an Amazon seller relies on systems that are incompatible or unable to communicate with one another, it can lead to data silos. Information is usually trapped and inaccessible to the other part of the business. This can hamper store performance and customer interactions, making it challenging to extract information.
For instance, many Amazon sellers use ERP platforms like SAP or NetSuite to manage finance, procurement, and supply chain. Without integration, sales data from Amazon stays locked in the seller account, forcing manual updates.
An integration automatically syncs sales orders, returns, and inventory across Amazon and the ERP, breaking down silos and ensuring financial reporting and stock management are accurate in real time.
Security risks and data privacy concerns
Integrating the Amazon platform with the internal system can introduce security vulnerabilities, including potential breaches during data transfer and unauthorised data access. These issues can stem from exchanging business and customer information across various systems.
For instance, sensitive customer payment details could be exposed to interception without proper encryption. The real challenge is ensuring that eCommerce integrations do not become a vulnerability that compromises data security and customer trust.
APPSeCONNECT implements data protection through encryption for data at rest and in transit. It ensures that you and the platform communicate through an encrypted connection, and security protocols (like SSL encryption and two-factor authentication) are maintained.
Complex system customizations
Tailoring software integrations to fit Amazon’s unique requirements can be intricate and resource-intensive. Customization typically involves programming and a solid grasp of the system and business requirements.
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solutions like APPSeCONNECT offer purpose-built connectors with ready-to-deploy functionality:
- Smart management of Amazon’s API limits through advanced queuing and automated retries.
- Integrated data transformation workflows that maintain consistency across all connected systems.
- Reliable queue architecture that prevents data loss even during system downtime.
- Auto-scaling functionality that seamlessly adjusts to increasing business volumes.
- Robust error handling with proactive notifications and self-recovery mechanisms.
- Flexible low-code setup that evolves with your changing business needs
This is the most practical implementation approach for most Amazon sellers. You might still need the help of a developer who understands business logic and creates integration workflows. But you’re no longer heavily dependent on the developer. The setup is scalable and sustainable.
How APPSeCONNECT helps in Amazon integration
APPSeCONNECT is dedicatedly to addressing Amazon integration challenges head-on. Its main USP lies in bringing user-friendly, quick setup capability and agile work process together.
APPSeCONNECT is the bridge between your Amazon marketplace and your ERP. With prebuilt integration scripts, your reliance on developers to automate Amazon Order Management will be minimal.
Here’s a real case study on how Eurofer used APPSeConnect to connect Amazon, Magento, and SAP Business One and streamlines its inventory process.
By letting APPSeCONNECT handle your integrations, your team can focus on driving growth initiatives instead of dealing with connection problems or performing time-consuming manual data transfers between systems.
With APPSeCONNECT, retailers are able to achieve 100% real time bidirectional data flow. Integration workflows created with APPSeCONNECT can increase business productivity by as much as 70%.
Frequently Asked Questions
Amazon integration connects your store with key business systems like inventory, CRM, and payment gateways, streamlining operations. APPSeCONNECT simplifies this process, ensuring real-time data flow.
APPSeCONNECT offers a low-code platform for seamless Amazon integration, automating order management and real-time syncing of data across systems, reducing manual errors.
Amazon integration solves issues like data silos and manual updates, and with APPSeCONNECT, businesses can automate syncs between Amazon and ERPs like SAP, enhancing operational efficiency.
APPSeCONNECT enables multi-region synchronization, allowing businesses to update Amazon US, UK, EU listings from a single ERP, saving time and ensuring consistency across regions.
APPSeCONNECT ensures secure data transfer with SSL encryption and two-factor authentication, safeguarding customer and business information during Amazon integrations.
