The web has redefined "timely information". Integrating your e-business web site with enterprise applications such as J.D. Edwards or SAP provides immediate availability of inventory levels and order status information. Customers and business partners expect current information in order to make their business decisions.

E-business integration provides immediate information from legacy systems to the web site (such as inventory levels) and immediately transmits orders from the web site to the internal legacy systems.

Do you really need to automatically transmit orders from your web site into your internal order entry system? Yes, in order to ensure accurate information. Some organizations opt to manually enter web orders when their e-commerce sites are first launched. This avoids the integration expense, but may introduce integrity problems if the information is not accurately entered into the internal order entry system. If customer orders are not accurately fulfilled, those customers may look to another supplier.

E-business integration solves accuracy problems by automatically transmitting data and processes used by internal enterprise applications.

Customers want access to their specific data on your web site. If you offer customer-specific pricing, provide your customers with access to their negotiated prices online through integration with internal legacy systems. While integrating customer data, also provide access to bill-to addresses, ship-to addresses, and payment terms to eliminate the need for customers to re-specify this information on your web site.

Provide online order history of not just web orders but all customer orders through integration with legacy order entry systems. This encourages customers to place replenishment orders. E-business integration provides your customer with access to their information.

There are several alternatives to integrating internal systems with your e-business web site. Files can be transferred to and from web servers using XML. Most database systems provide data replication facilities.

But e-business integration involves more than just integrating the data; the business processes must also be integrated in order to consistently enforce your business rules in internal legacy systems and on the web. Integration of business processes often involves invoking internal legacy transactions from the web server or utilizing objects provided by the enterprise application software vendor.