Integrations
What is an API integration
An API integration lets two systems exchange data without anyone retyping it. Your accounting package, your web shop, your planning and your CRM each have a door for other software, and an integration is the traffic through that door. This is how it works and where it goes wrong.
Why almost every company needs one
According to Statistics Netherlands, in 2025 half of companies with ten or more employees used ERP software and 54 percent used CRM software. Among companies with 100 to 250 people it is 78 and 73 percent. Each of those packages knows part of your business. What one knows and the other does not gets retyped, unless there is an integration.
How an integration works
An API is an agreed way for software to talk to other software. One system asks a question, the other answers, in a fixed form.
- Polling: your software asks every ten minutes whether there are new orders. Simple, but always slightly late.
- Webhooks: the system reports itself that something happened, at that moment. Faster, but you must be able to receive and store every message.
- Translating: every system names things differently. A customer, a relation and a debtor are often the same. That translation is the real work.
Access and limits
A package gives your software access through a key or through OAuth, where the user grants permission once. After that, limits apply. Business Central allows 6,000 requests per user per five minutes and answers with an error code above that. An integration that ignores this stops at the busiest moment.
Keeping it secure
OWASP maintains a list of the ten biggest risks of APIs. At the top are not exotic attacks but gaps in who may see what.
- Permissions per object: user A may see order 100, not order 101.
- Keys that are not in code or in email, and that you can revoke.
- A cap on how much an integration may request, so a bug does not become an outage.
- A list of all integrations that exist, with who manages them. Forgotten integrations are on the OWASP list.
Where it usually goes wrong
Not in the technology.
- Data that differs between two systems: an address with a typo, an item number that changed.
- A password that expires or an employee who leaves, so the integration stops.
- Nobody who sees that it has stopped. An integration should have a status light.
Frequently asked questions
Does my package have an API?
Almost every package from the last ten years has one. Exact Online, AFAS, Business Central, Shopify and WooCommerce all have one with documentation. For a package without an API there is often an export or a database we can read.
What is the difference between an API and an integration?
The API is the door the vendor builds. The integration is the software that goes through that door and translates data to your other system.
Can an integration damage data?
Yes, if it is built wrongly. That is why you test on a copy, build a check before anything is written, and keep a log of what changed.
Sources
Where every figure on this page comes from.
Our approach
From advice to management, with one partner
The same rhythm for every project.
Advice
We start with a conversation, not with code. First clarity on what you need and what you do not.
Build
We build and integrate to measure, with technology that fits you. You own your data and your code.
Manage
We stay involved: monitoring, adjusting and growing with your business.
Which two systems do not talk to each other yet?
Name them, and in one conversation we tell you whether there is a door and what can go through it.
Call 085 083 5775A 30-minute intake