Editorial draft available to read. Factual and language review is pending. Examples are illustrative.
Decision and method
Assign authority by entity and, where necessary, by field. A company may be managed commercially in the CRM while its accounting identifier originates in the administrative system. Document synchronization direction, data ownership and conflict resolution. Avoid implicit rules that treat whichever edit arrived most recently as automatically correct for every purpose.
Illustrative example
Illustrative example: the CRM owns the salesperson field and the ERP owns approved billing terms. Both display the information, but only the responsible system changes it. If an old import attempts to replace the terms, the integration records a conflict and preserves the authority already assigned to that particular field.
Acceptance check
Test simultaneous edits, old records and a temporarily disconnected source. Check for update loops. Accept the design when staff know where to correct each fact and history explains why a version was selected. Displayed copies should indicate their update state whenever they might lag behind the system that owns the information.
Key takeaways
- Define explicit authority before allowing information to synchronize in multiple directions.