SAP B1 and Emarsys
Integration Agency & Consultants
The gap between SAP B1 sales data and Emarsys marketing engagement often leads to revenue leakage. When marketing segments are built on incomplete customer history, campaigns can underperform. This becomes a significant issue when the marketing team lacks accurate purchase triggers or lifetime value data. We establish a reliable connection where SAP B1 transactional records enrich Emarsys profiles, ensuring campaigns are informed by accurate customer data.
Auditing SAP B1 and Emarsys architecture
Cogent connects your SAP B1 and Emarsys systems efficiently, ensuring your ERP and ESP work in harmony. Our consulting services are invaluable, offering system audits that empower both our consultants and your team to address issues, ensuring your tech ecosystems operate smoothly. This results in a superior customer experience. By integrating SAP B1 with Emarsys, we optimise your ERP and ESP, enhancing operational efficiency. Our audits identify and resolve inefficiencies, allowing your business to deliver exceptional service and maintain a competitive edge.
Solution Design
In the SAP B1 and Emarsys integration, we treat SAP B1 as the authoritative source for customer records and transactional history. A core design decision involves synchronising Business Partner data and line-level invoice history into Emarsys to drive segmentation. We typically prioritise a scheduled sync for historical transactional data to maintain system performance, while opt-in status changes and new customer registrations are updated more frequently.
A significant trade-off exists in the granularity of sync. Pushing every inventory adjustment from SAP B1 frequently increases system load. Instead, the design uses defined triggers to update stock availability for marketing campaigns. This ensures marketing works with accurate data while allowing the ERP to remain the stable source for financial reporting and order fulfilment. The design ensures that marketing triggers and financial records stay in step across both systems.
Synchronising business partners and sales documents
The integration synchronises SAP B1 Business Partner records and sales documents with the Emarsys contact database to ensure marketing teams work from a single source of truth. Mapping rules align SAP B1 Sales Orders with Emarsys tracking requirements, using unique identifiers to maintain data integrity across both systems. Transactional headers and line items are validated before synchronisation to prevent incomplete records from affecting campaign segmentation or reporting. This approach enriches Emarsys profiles with purchase history from SAP B1, allowing for more targeted customer engagement. Monitoring is included to identify sync issues or data gaps early, ensuring customer segments are updated as transactions occur in the ERP.
Managed orchestration via secure IPaaS layers
Cogent2 leverages IPaaS to integrate SAP B1 and Emarsys, ensuring secure ERP and ESP connections. IPaaS platforms simplify SAP B1 and Emarsys integration, offering benefits like automated ERP and ESP data exchange. With ISO 27001 and SOC 2 compliance and above, IPaaS ensures data security and reliability, making it ideal for businesses seeking efficient, secure integration solutions.
Identifying data gaps and record conflicts
Standard dashboards often fail to show what is missing; they only track what was successfully sent. We focus on exposing the gaps where SAP B1 records have changed but have not been updated in Emarsys. Visibility is achieved by monitoring the flow of data and surfacing specific exceptions such as record conflicts. This approach allows teams to identify and fix data issues before they impact campaign performance or customer experience.
Practical handover for marketing and finance
Post-launch, ownership typically spans the marketing, ecommerce, and finance teams. We hand over an operational framework that defines where customer data originates in SAP B1 and how it surfaces within Emarsys segments. Teams learn to perform daily checks on sync health and regular reviews of data integrity between ERP transactional records and marketing profiles.
Training focuses on interpreting alerts from the integration layer so that ecommerce leads can manage data mismatch exceptions and marketing can monitor opt-in status. Documentation is provided as a practical operating manual for the business, rather than a technical reference. This ensures the team understands who is responsible for each exception type and how to maintain the customer data loop.
Governance and transactional error management
Ongoing support focuses on maintaining the data connection between SAP B1 and Emarsys. Beyond fixing failed syncs, we monitor for data issues that arise when business processes change in the ERP, such as updates to Business Partner records. Escalation paths ensure that transactional errors are addressed by the relevant team before they impact marketing efforts. This continuous monitoring ensures the integration supports your marketing strategies by keeping purchase history and customer data in sync across both platforms.
Common failures
Stale customer segmentation data
Operational impact: Marketing sends poorly targeted campaigns because customer data in Emarsys does not reflect recent activity in SAP B1. For instance, a high-value customer is omitted from a VIP campaign because their latest Sales Order has not updated their status, leading to wasted spend and missed revenue. This erodes trust between the marketing and finance teams, who see different views of customer value.
Prevention / Action: Define SAP B1 Business Partner Master Data (OCRD) as the single source of truth for customer records. The integration must handle updates from SAP B1 to Emarsys, mapping User Defined Fields (UDFs) to specific Emarsys contact fields. Schedule regular batch updates for general data hygiene, but implement trigger-based syncs for events like a first purchase or a change in a key account flag to ensure marketing data is current.
Disconnected product catalogues and stock levels
Operational impact: Emarsys campaigns promote products that are out of stock, using incorrect pricing, or are no longer part of the current catalogue. This leads directly to customer frustration, wasted advertising budget, and a poor brand experience. The marketing and merchandising teams spend time manually cross-referencing product availability instead of focusing on campaign strategy.
Prevention / Action: The integration must enforce a clear source of truth, with the SAP B1 Item Master (OITM) record governing the core product data sent to the Emarsys catalogue. Ensure the integration logic specifies exactly which SAP B1 Warehouses (OWHS) contribute to the 'available-to-sell' figure. Implement robust exception handling to flag and quarantine any SKUs that fail to sync correctly, preventing the publication of bad data.
Delayed or missing post-purchase triggers
Operational impact: Critical post-purchase automations in Emarsys, such as requesting a product review or sending warranty information, fail to fire. This happens because the integration does not transmit the corresponding Sales Order or Delivery document status from SAP B1 in a timely manner. This missed opportunity weakens customer engagement, reduces the volume of user-generated content, and can increase preventable customer service contacts.
Prevention / Action: Map specific SAP B1 document statuses to distinct external events recognised by Emarsys. Rather than relying on nightly batch syncs for this, the integration should use more frequent polling or trigger-based mechanisms to capture status changes as they occur. The process design must clearly define whether the integration is responsible for triggering the Emarsys event directly or for updating a contact field that Emarsys monitors.
Inaccurate customer lifetime value and order history
Operational impact: The marketing team builds retention segments in Emarsys based on an incomplete or incorrect view of a customer's purchase history and value. This occurs when returns, credit notes, or cancelled orders processed in SAP B1 are not correctly synchronised. Consequently, high-value customers might not be recognised, and loyalty rewards may be granted based on flawed data, impacting both customer experience and profitability.
Prevention / Action: Establish SAP B1 as the definitive source for all transactional data, including Sales Invoices (OINV) and Credit Memos (ORIN). The integration's logic must ensure that any financial transaction affecting a customer's total spend is passed to Emarsys to adjust their record accordingly. Consider implementing a scheduled reconciliation task that compares aggregated sales data totals between the systems to proactively catch and investigate any drift.
Frequently asked questions
Beyond contact details, what data from SAP B1 can we use to improve marketing segmentation in Emarsys?
The goal is enriching Emarsys profiles with transactional data from SAP B1, making it the source of truth for customer behaviour. This includes syncing sales order history and specific item records purchased. This allows you to create segments in Emarsys for targeted cross-sell campaigns based on actual purchase history.
How does linking Emarsys to SAP B1 help improve ROI?
Underperformance often stems from marketing to generic segments. By making SAP B1 the source of truth for customer history, you can sync detailed sales order data to build richer segments. This allows you to target customers based on actual lifetime value and purchase frequency calculated from the ERP.
Will custom fields in SAP B1 sync to Emarsys?
Standard integrations often miss User Defined Fields (UDFs) on the SAP B1 Business Partner record. These attributes are often critical for segmentation. The integration must be configured to map these UDFs to Emarsys contact fields to ensure they are available for personalised campaigns.
How does SAP B1 warehouse data affect Emarsys 'back in stock' alerts?
Mapping multiple SAP B1 warehouses to Emarsys requires specific logic to avoid inaccurate stock levels. The integration must aggregate inventory from all relevant warehouse records to provide a true picture of available stock. This ensures that 'back in stock' campaigns are only sent when items are actually available to sell.