The Problem With Scale
When an e-commerce store is doing 50 orders a day, manual processes work. Someone can check stock, update the website, pack orders, and generate waybills without breaking a sweat.
At 200 orders a day, it's stressful but manageable with a good team.
At 1,000+ orders a day? Manual processes don't just become inefficient—they become impossible. You need systems that talk to each other without human intervention.
This is the story of how I built exactly that.
The Starting Point
I was brought in to help a major South African electronics retailer (you might recognise their bright yellow branding) connect their warehouse management system to their PrestaShop store.
The situation when I arrived:
The Solution Architecture
I'm going to get a bit technical here, but I'll try to keep it accessible.
Real-Time Stock Synchronisation
The warehouse system had an API (thankfully), but it wasn't designed for the volume we needed. Here's what I built:
**A middleware layer** that sits between PrestaShop and the warehouse system. It:
**Why not webhooks?** The warehouse system didn't support them reliably. You work with what you have.
Order Processing Pipeline
When a customer places an order:
All of this happens without human intervention for standard orders. Only exceptions (partial stock, payment issues) get flagged for manual review.
The Challenges Nobody Warns You About
1. Data Inconsistency
The warehouse system and PrestaShop had different ideas about what a "product" was. The warehouse tracked by SKU and warehouse location. PrestaShop tracked by product ID and variation ID.
I spent three weeks just building the mapping layer to translate between them. It's unglamorous work, but it's where integrations succeed or fail.
2. Edge Cases Everywhere
Bundles. Products that come in packs. Items with serial numbers. Pre-orders. Backorders. Products that can't ship to certain regions.
Each one needed special handling. The "happy path" is maybe 80% of orders. The other 20% is where the complexity lives.
3. Failure Modes
What happens when:
Every integration needs answers to these questions. Most of my code isn't doing the integration—it's handling what happens when things go wrong.
4. Load Shedding
Yes, really. When the warehouse's power goes out, the API goes with it. I had to build in:
Welcome to South African e-commerce development.
The Results
After six months of development and refinement:
The system now handles Black Friday volumes without breaking a sweat.
Lessons I've Taken Forward
1. Never Trust Either System
Both your e-commerce platform and your external system will have bugs, quirks, and undocumented behaviour. Build defensively.
2. Logging Is Not Optional
When something goes wrong at 2 AM, you need to know exactly what happened, in what order, with what data. Log aggressively.
3. Start With The Exception Cases
The happy path is easy. Understanding all the ways things can go wrong early saves massive refactoring later.
4. Build For Humans Too
Your system will need human override capability. Make it easy for staff to intervene when needed without breaking the automation.
Is This Kind of Integration Right For Your Business?
Honestly? Most businesses don't need this level of automation. If you're doing under 100 orders a day, simpler solutions might make more sense.
But if you're scaling, if manual processes are becoming a bottleneck, if errors are costing you money and customer trust—then it's worth having a conversation about what's possible.