Integrations are where an ERP stops being a system your team enters data into and starts being a system that does work. Five matter on day one for a Bangladeshi developer, and each one removes a specific manual task that otherwise consumes a person's week.
1. SMS
The baseline channel. Every buyer has it, it needs no app, and it is the fallback when a WhatsApp message fails. Use it for receipt confirmations, due-date reminders and appointment confirmations. Cost is per message and small. What breaks without it: receipts are confirmed verbally, so a buyer's only record of payment is a piece of paper they may lose.
2. WhatsApp
Higher engagement than SMS and the channel Bangladeshi buyers actually reply in. It carries platform rules — approved templates for business-initiated messages, category discipline and opt-out handling — which is why it needs a proper integration rather than someone sending from a phone. See WhatsApp kisti reminders. What breaks without it: reminders go out by hand, inconsistently, and the collection team spends its week on calls that a template would have prevented.
3. Payment gateway or payment link
A link in the reminder that opens a payment page removes the step where the buyer has to find account details. Two things matter in the setup: the reference must carry through so the payment reconciles automatically, and the gateway charge position must be decided and configured. See reconciling bKash, Nagad, bank and cash. What breaks without it: every payment is a manual matching exercise.
4. Accounting export
Receipts and vendor payments belong in the accounts package, and they should get there without re-keying. A real-time API is nice; a structured export in the format your accounts software imports is sufficient. What matters is that the numbers agree — a monthly reconciliation between collection recorded in the ERP and receipts posted in accounts should net to zero. What breaks without it: two systems with different collection totals, and a month-end spent explaining the difference.
5. Calendar
Site visits, handover appointments and registration appointments are calendar events, and they belong in the calendar the team actually uses. Low glamour, high adoption impact: a sales team whose visits appear on their phone uses the CRM; one that has to check a separate system does not.
What each costs and what to check
| Integration | Typical cost | What to verify before buying |
|---|---|---|
| SMS | Per message, low | Delivery reports written back to the record |
| Per message plus setup | Template management and opt-out handling built in | |
| Payment gateway | Percentage per transaction | Reference passthrough and automatic reconciliation |
| Accounting | Usually setup only | The export format matches your package's import |
| Calendar | Usually included | Two-way sync, not just push |
The failure mode nobody plans for
Integrations fail silently. A webhook stops, a template gets rejected, a gateway credential expires, and nothing throws an error visible to anyone — messages simply stop going out and nobody notices for a month. Guard against it with weekly count reconciliation: messages due versus sent, gateway transactions versus receipts, leads in the ad platform versus leads created. It takes ten minutes and it is the difference between an integration and an assumption. The same discipline applies to lead delivery — see Facebook lead ads to CRM.
What to do next
List the five integrations against your current setup and mark each as working, manual or absent. Every "manual" is a recurring cost you are paying in staff time — see what connects out of the box.