A pattern I keep seeing: distributors trying to make their ERP the center of their digital commerce stack. It never works well.
ERPs are systems of record. They're optimized for transactions, accounting, and inventory tracking. They are not optimized for product discovery, customer experience, or real-time search.
The right architecture treats the ERP as a data source, not a platform. Commerce, search, and customer-facing experiences should be separate systems that sync with the ERP — not extensions of it.
This doesn't mean replacing the ERP. It means stopping the pretense that it can do everything. Let it do what it's good at. Build the rest elsewhere.