How to integrate your business systems: a practical 2026 guide

Almost every growing company hits the same wall: the tools are great on their own, but the data does not move between them. Sales lives in a CRM, finance in an ERP, analytics in a warehouse — and someone is re-keying records or exporting spreadsheets to bridge the gap. This guide lays out the real options for connecting your systems, the trade-offs of each, and how to choose.

The four ways to integrate two systems

Almost every approach falls into one of four buckets. They differ mostly in who builds it and who operates it afterward.

• DIY scripts / custom code — your engineers write and maintain it.
• iPaaS platforms — you license a tool and build the flows in it yourself.
• ETL / ELT tools — one-way pipelines that load data into a warehouse.
• Delivered integration — a partner architects, builds, and hands it over (or runs it).

1. DIY scripts and custom code

The fastest thing to start and the most expensive to keep. A script that calls two APIs works on day one, but someone now owns auth refreshes, rate limits, retries, schema changes, error alerting, and the pager when it breaks. Fine for a one-off; a liability as a system of record.

2. iPaaS platforms

Tools like Workato, Boomi, and MuleSoft give you a builder and prebuilt connectors. They are capable, but the model is still "you build and you maintain," and licensing plus specialized developers add up. They fit teams that want to own integration as an in-house capability. We help clients evaluate the major platforms — for example vs MuleSoft, vs Workato, and vs Boomi — and, when it is the right call, build on them.

3. ETL / ELT tools

Tools like Fivetran are excellent at one job: loading data one-way into a warehouse for analytics. What they do not do is two-way, app-to-app integration with business logic — turning a closed deal into an ERP order, or keeping a CRM and a help desk in sync. If your only goal is warehouse reporting, ELT is a clean fit; if you need systems to act on each other, it is only half the picture. See Salesforce to Snowflake, NetSuite to Snowflake, or how we think about it vs Fivetran.

4. Delivered integration

This is what Green Dolphin does. You describe the outcome; senior architects plus AI draft the field-by-field mapping, and we deliver it as a fixed-bid project with a target-state architecture diagram — typically in 3 to 8 weeks rather than the usual 8 to 12. There is no tool for your team to learn and no open-ended time-and-materials meter. You can also keep us on for managed support after handover.

How to choose

Four questions usually settle it:

• Do you have engineers who want to own integration as ongoing work? If not, rule out DIY and most iPaaS.
• Is this one-way into a warehouse, or do the systems need to act on each other? One-way favors ELT; two-way needs real integration.
• How predictable does the cost need to be? Time-and-materials and per-task pricing punish change; a fixed bid does not.
• Who carries the pager when it breaks? That is the hidden cost most comparisons skip.

Common pitfalls

• Underestimating maintenance — the build is roughly 20% of lifetime cost; keeping it running is the rest.
• Ignoring deletes and schema drift — fields get added and records get removed, and naive syncs silently rot.
• Flat-thinking the data — real records have line items and nested objects, not just top-level fields.
• No record-level filter — moving everything instead of only the records you mean to.

Popular integrations, explained

Each guide covers what is typically synced and the real gotchas for that specific pair: Salesforce to NetSuite, HubSpot to Salesforce, Shopify to NetSuite, and Stripe to NetSuite. Or browse all integrations.

The cheapest integration to build is rarely the cheapest to own. Decide who maintains it before you decide how to build it.

If you would rather not build it yourself, tell us what to connect or try the mapping wizard — and see sample deliverables for what you get.