Almost every project which is focused on warehouse management or supply chain execution will involve some kind of integration with an external system. Integration can save a large amount of human effort as data does not have to be entered multiple times and there is less chance of it being right in one system and wrong in another.

The vast majority of applications that would need some form of integration will already have the ability to import and export data. The challenge is that its very unlikely that two given systems will be able to produce data in a single format that both understand.

This is when the technical guys get together and work out the best way of making each of the applications understand each other. There are a few ways this can be achieved: