Integration
Service sheet 4/6 · Medium–High · 2–10 weeks per systemConnect the AI to the systems that hold your stock, customers, money and invoices.
- Reliable connections between the AI flow and your systems of record, using official APIs where they exist.
- Defined behaviour when a connection fails: queueing, retries, alerts, and a human fallback.
- Documentation of every integration point — what it reads, what it writes, who owns the credentials.
- Integration map (systems, direction of data, method, owner)
- Working connectors with error handling and logs
- Failure-mode tests (system down, wrong data, duplicate records) with results
- Credential register in your name
- The AI must answer with live facts — stock, prices, order status, bookings, balances.
- Leads or documents must land in your CRM or accounting system without retyping.
- You are replacing a WhatsApp group workflow with a system that has to write to the POS or ERP.
| Effort band | Medium–High · 2–10 weeks per system |
|---|---|
| Methods | Official API › export/import › database read › screen automation (last resort) |
| Common local endpoints | WhatsApp Business Platform, EcoCash merchant, fiscal device / FDMS, Pastel/Sage, Odoo, Google Sheets |
| Pricing fit | Fixed per connector; T&M for undocumented legacy |
| Zimbabwe constraint | Buyer details and QR on fiscal invoices (ZIMRA PN 30/2025) — no invoice may bypass the fiscal device |
- "Unofficial" WhatsApp connections that run on a phone or a reverse-engineered client — Meta can block the number.
- Screen-scraping a legacy system with no agreed fallback when the screen changes.
- Integration credentials that live in the developer's personal account.
Fixed scope per connector · Time and materials for undocumented systems
See pricing models for how each behaves when volume changes.
Most AI projects are integration projects wearing an AI badge. The chatbot is a week; teaching it to read your stock list from the POS, write the lead into your CRM and never issue an invoice outside the fiscal device is the other seven weeks.
Method ladder. Ask the vendor which rung each connection sits on: (1) official API — best; (2) scheduled export/import — fine for reports and daily stock; (3) direct database read — acceptable with read-only credentials; (4) screen automation — fragile, needs a fallback, and should be priced as maintenance, not a one-off.
Local endpoints worth naming. WhatsApp Business Platform (the official Cloud API, with your business verified by Meta); EcoCash merchant services for collections; the fiscal device or virtual fiscal device that talks to ZIMRA’s Fiscalisation Data Management System — since 31 May 2025 fiscal tax invoices must carry buyer details and a verifiable QR code, so any “AI invoice generator” must either drive the fiscal device or stop at a quotation. Accounting packages common here (Sage/Pastel, QuickBooks, Odoo) all have import routes even where API access is limited.
Failure is a requirement. For every connector, ask: what happens when the other system is down for 40 minutes during load shedding? The right answer contains the words “queue”, “retry”, “alert” and “a person”.