Hair styling tools manufacturer Cloud Nine has successfully unified its technology stack by deploying Codeless Platforms’ BPA Platform to integrate Oracle NetSuite, Salesforce, Shopify GraphQL, eBay, DPD, and multiple third-party logistics providers across the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
The integration investment paid for itself within the first year, according to Blaise Lester, group business systems development manager at Cloud Nine. The platform now serves as the critical middleware enabling the company to manage customer and order data across its entire technology ecosystem.
Cloud Nine initially implemented BPA Platform to connect its website and ERP system. Over several years, the company progressively added Salesforce for customer relationship management, migrated to Shopify for e-commerce and eventually replaced its ERP with Oracle NetSuite without disrupting business operations. BPA Platform’s pre-built connectors for each system allowed Cloud Nine to execute these transitions efficiently.
The platform currently automates data flows including order imports, deposit creations, order updates, dispatches, credit memos, returns and payments from various sources into NetSuite. Information then exports back to Shopify and Salesforce, creating a bidirectional sync across systems. The Salesforce connector transfers customer information, assets, metadata, sales orders, and serial numbers while also pulling Trustpilot reviews into the CRM.
For Shopify integration, Cloud Nine leverages GraphQL APIs for most operations, automating order transfers, product synchronization, data updates, refunds and customer detail synchronization including metadata. The company also maintains integrations with 3PLs across multiple territories using a combination of API calls and XML messages.
What Integration Platforms Mean for Technology Leaders
For technology executives managing complex ERP ecosystems, integration platforms like BPA Platform demonstrate a practical alternative to custom-coded point-to-point integrations. The ability to swap out major systems from legacy ERP to NetSuite without rebuilding integration logic represents significant operational flexibility. This matters for mid-market companies that lack dedicated integration teams but still require enterprise-grade connectivity.
The market for integration platform as a service continues expanding as companies adopt cloud applications faster than IT departments can connect them. Organizations typically evaluate providers on connector breadth, support for both REST and SOAP protocols, data transformation capabilities and total cost of ownership. Cloud Nine’s case illustrates that pre-built connectors reduce implementation time substantially compared to custom development.
When integrating e-commerce platforms with ERP systems, practitioners should prioritize real-time or near-real-time data synchronization for inventory, orders and customer information. The ability to handle GraphQL alongside REST APIs, as Cloud Nine does with Shopify, provides more efficient data retrieval for complex queries. Organizations should also ensure their integration platform supports both inbound and outbound data flows, enabling ERP systems to serve as the single source of truth.
A common adoption challenge involves managing schema changes when upgrading or replacing source systems. Cloud Nine’s ability to reconnect Shopify and Salesforce to NetSuite after replacing its previous ERP suggests that abstraction layers in integration platforms can cushion these transitions, though specific reconnection effort details were not disclosed.
What This Means for ERP Insiders
Middleware investments reduce platform switching costs. Cloud Nine’s experience demonstrates how organizations with robust integration infrastructure can modernize their technology stacks incrementally without business disruption. For ERP vendors and system integrators, this signals that customers increasingly expect plug-and-play connectivity rather than expensive custom integration projects. The ability to swap underlying systems while maintaining operational continuity shifts competitive dynamics toward platforms strong connections.
Integration platforms enable composable architecture strategies. The case illustrates how mid-market companies assemble best-of-breed applications rather than relying on monolithic suites. Enterprise architects should recognize that integration platforms serve as the connective tissue enabling composable approaches. This pressures ERP vendors to improve API quality and openness while creating opportunities for integration specialists and cloud-native ERP providers.
Real-time data synchronization requirements intensify across channels. Cloud Nine’s need to synchronize orders, inventory, customer data and even Trustpilot reviews across multiple systems reflects broader market expectations for unified, real-time information across touchpoints. Transformation leaders should prioritize integration platforms supporting event-driven architectures, recognizing that batch-oriented integrations no longer meet operational requirements for companies managing omnichannel commerce and global logistics networks.
