Extract Your Business Logic. Keep Your ERP in Place.
We decouple business capabilities from ERP monoliths - incrementally, in production, without disrupting finance, warehouse, or operations. First production API within eight weeks.
The ERP was supposed to be the system of record. Instead, it became the system of constraint.
It started with configuration. Then customisation. Then years of accumulated business logic embedded in a platform that was never designed to carry it. Today, deploying a new pricing rule requires a SAP consultant, a change request, a test cycle, and weeks of waiting. A new integration touches fifteen modules. A single report takes three business days to modify.
The answer is not to replace the ERP. According to Panorama Consulting's research, large ERP replacement projects exceed budget in over 50% of cases and take years to deliver value. The answer is to stop adding to it and start extracting from it. Move business logic into purpose-built services with clean APIs. Let the ERP continue to do what it does well - financial ledger, master data, regulatory compliance - while everything that requires speed, flexibility, or integration sits outside it.
This is ERP decoupling. Not a replacement project. A disciplined, incremental extraction that keeps the business running at every step.
The Business Case
ERP decoupling is not an architecture project. It is an operating cost and speed-to-market decision.
Before decoupling: Every business change routes through the ERP. Pricing updates take weeks. New channel integrations require months of scoping. Reporting modifications consume IT capacity that should be building product. The cost of change is high, unpredictable, and rising.
After decoupling: Product teams ship independently. Pricing, fulfilment, and integration logic live in services your teams control. ERP change requests drop. Vendor dependency decreases. Time-to-market for business capability changes moves from weeks to days.
The ERP stays. The constraint goes.
How We Engage
Competitors in the DACH market treat ERP decoupling as a multi-year transformation engagement - large teams, extended discovery, deferred value. Gradion scopes the first decoupling target in two weeks and delivers the first production API within eight.
Phase | What happens | Typical timeframe |
|---|---|---|
Boundary Assessment | We map business capabilities locked inside the ERP, rank by pain level, change frequency, and integration surface. You get a prioritised decoupling roadmap and API contract definitions - a concrete execution plan, not a slide deck. | 2 weeks |
First Extraction | The highest-pain capability extracted into a purpose-built service with a stable API. Live data, production traffic, strangler-fig routing so the ERP continues to function throughout. Validated under production load before cutover. | 6–8 weeks |
Sequential Decoupling | Each subsequent extraction is faster and cheaper - the integration patterns, data sync layer, and deployment infrastructure already exist. We move through the roadmap in priority order. | Ongoing, 4–6 weeks per capability |
Cutover is a routing change, not a go-live event. Rollback is always available until the old ERP path is formally decommissioned.
What We Deliver
Two core capabilities on the page. Full methodology available on request.
Boundary Identification & Decoupling Roadmap
The first question is not how to decouple but where. Not every ERP function is a decoupling candidate. We map the capabilities currently locked inside the ERP, rank them by pain, and define the API contract for each. The output is a prioritised execution plan: which capabilities to extract first, in what order, and what the interface for each should look like.
API Layer Design & Contract Definition
Extraction without a stable API contract creates a different kind of technical debt. We define the API layer before we build it: resource model, versioning strategy, error handling conventions, authentication model. Downstream consumers - the e-commerce platform, the logistics system, the reporting layer - get a stable contract they can build against before the ERP integration is complete. This decouples the delivery timeline from the ERP migration itself, letting front-end and integration work proceed in parallel.
Additional delivery capabilities
Capability | Summary |
|---|---|
Strangler-Fig Extraction | New API calls route to the extracted service; old ERP calls continue until the new service is validated and stable. Traffic shifts gradually. The ERP is not modified during extraction - only the routing layer changes. Zero disruption to finance, warehouse, or operations. |
SAP & Legacy Integration | SAP: BAPIs, IDocs, OData, RFC - consuming published interfaces, avoiding custom ABAP. Oracle and legacy: adapter patterns and anti-corruption layers that isolate extracted services from ERP internals. |
Data Synchronisation | Explicit consistency guarantees per entity: source of truth, conflict resolution, maximum acceptable lag, failure detection and recovery. Stricter models for financial data; eventual consistency where acceptable. |
Gradual Migration | We never extract a capability until the replacement service is running in parallel and validated under production load. Finance processes month-end close. The warehouse ships orders. Nothing stops during decoupling. |
Technology
Layer | What we use |
|---|---|
Integration | REST and GraphQL APIs (OpenAPI spec), event-driven patterns (Kafka, RabbitMQ), adapter and anti-corruption layers for SAP RFC/BAPI/IDoc surfaces |
Services | Containerised on Kubernetes, independent deployment pipelines per extracted service, observability from day one (structured logging, distributed tracing, alerting) |
Data | Purpose-built read models for reporting and analytics, separated from the ERP transactional store. Change data capture for synchronisation where direct API access is unavailable |
ERP Surfaces | SAP S/4HANA, SAP ECC, Oracle E-Business Suite, Microsoft Dynamics, custom legacy systems with database-level or file-based integration points |
Proof In Production
Luxury Art-book Publisher - ERP Integration Layer, €27M GMV Platform
A renowned luxury art-book publisher operating 12 stores globally had backend operations split across disconnected systems - product data, inventory, and orders managed with significant manual overhead. Gradion kept Microsoft Business Central as the ERP and system of record, building a dual-instance Shopify Plus commerce layer around it with real-time sync to the ERP, Akeneo (PIM), and Makaira (CMS) via clean API integrations. The manual coordination that had previously bridged these systems was eliminated entirely. The platform now handles €27M in annual GMV and individual sales events of up to €5M without instability.
Health-tech Manufacturer - ERP and PIM Decoupled from Commerce, €400M Business
A major health-tech manufacturer with €400M in annual revenue and products in 100+ markets was running into a persistent problem: ERP and PIM data drifting out of sync with what customers saw across three Shopify Plus storefronts in the EU, UK, and US. In a health-tech context, data accuracy carries clinical relevance. Gradion kept the existing ERP and PIM in place and engineered a custom API integration layer that syncs both systems automatically every 15 minutes across all three instances. Fulfilment failures and manual overhead dropped immediately. The architecture now supports €400M in GMV across 100+ markets without the ERP or PIM needing to change.
All figures are from live engagements. Client references available under NDA.
Name the process that is blocking you most.
A pricing workflow. A fulfilment integration. A reporting dependency. We will assess the extraction path, define the API contract, and scope the first delivery. You will have a working production service - not a roadmap - within eight weeks.