Orderwise Live 2025: Four clear themes

Last week at Orderwise Live 2025, I spoke alongside Forterro CEO Dean Forbes and listened to manufacturers discuss their real operational challenges. The conversations revealed four clear themes that matter for anyone running a manufacturing business or evaluating their technology stack.

ERP Systems Are the Engine Room of Manufacturing

For the manufacturers at this event, Orderwise isn’t software they happen to use – it’s operational infrastructure they depend on every day. These businesses have moved far beyond basic inventory tracking into complex procurement workflows, multi-location stock management, automated reordering, and real-time visibility across their entire operation.

When these systems work seamlessly, businesses can scale without adding operational overhead. When they break down or require constant manual intervention, growth stalls while teams spend their time firefighting instead of building the business.

The manufacturers whom I spoke with during the breaks weren’t that interested in celebrating clever features or impressive dashboards. They were talking about eliminating manual processes, automated workflows, and the operational clarity that saves them time and money. These are the businesses that have turned their ERP into a way to stay pragmatic and lean, and spend their money on “more important things”.

Customer Relationships Span the Spectrum

Orderwise has cultivated some genuinely strong customer relationships – businesses that couldn’t imagine operating without the platform and speak about it with real enthusiasm. But the event also revealed customers wrestling with legacy issues, integration challenges, and support frustrations that have built up over the years.

Many of these difficult relationships trace back to pre-Forterro ownership. David Hallam built Orderwise over three decades, and like many long-standing software companies, technical debt and operational practices accumulated alongside business growth. Forterro’s acquisition has brought fresh capital, improved processes, and a clearer roadmap for development, which has resolved many challenging relationships, though some issues run deeper than new ownership can immediately address.

For manufacturers currently evaluating their options, this dynamic offers an important lesson: look beyond the sales presentation and demo environment. The way a software provider handles existing customers – particularly those with challenging requirements or legacy setups – often predicts how they’ll support you when operational problems arise.

Integration and Automation Drive Real Value

The most consistent theme throughout the day wasn’t about new features, artificial intelligence, or cutting-edge functionality – although this was a close second on every single chat I had. Customer after customer raised questions about connecting their ERP to eCommerce platforms, automating data flows between systems, and eliminating the manual processes that consume their teams’ time and create opportunities for errors.

This focus reflects the operational reality facing UK manufacturers today. They’re operating in increasingly complex digital ecosystems where their ERP needs to communicate with eCommerce platforms, CRM systems, accounting software, warehouse management tools, and various supplier or customer portals. When these integrations work properly, data flows automatically, and teams can focus on value-adding activities. When integrations break down or require constant manual intervention, businesses revert to spreadsheet workarounds and the operational inefficiencies that limit growth.

The integration challenge becomes particularly acute when manufacturers decide to expand their sales channels. Many Orderwise customers are exploring B2B eCommerce for the first time, looking to complement their traditional sales approach with online ordering capabilities that can serve existing customers more efficiently while opening doors to new markets. The success of this digital transformation depends entirely on how well their ERP integrates with their chosen eCommerce platform.

The second largest challenge I see is that complexity has bled into processes, as workarounds to the limitations of technology have been added. The businesses are usually one step ahead of the ERP, especially some of the more mature platforms and need to put in chewing gum and tape patches to grow. When the platform catches up with a sophisticated but rule-bound system, the cracks start to emerge.

For a truly blissful integration, I feel that sometimes the business needs to compromise a little and meet the platform to come forward again together.

Shopify Integration Reflects Broader Market Trends

Several manufacturers specifically asked about Shopify integration during the event, which reflects Shopify’s growing presence in B2B commerce and the platform’s evolution beyond its consumer retail roots. While Orderwise includes built-in eCommerce capabilities, many businesses prefer a best-of-breed approach, using specialist eCommerce platforms for online sales while maintaining their ERP for operational management and back-office processes.

Recent developments have made Orderwise and Shopify integration more sophisticated, including new plugins that simplify data synchronisation between the platforms. These tools can automate inventory updates, order processing, and customer data management, reducing the manual overhead that often makes multi-platform approaches impractical for smaller teams.

However, like all ERP integrations, success depends heavily on proper planning and implementation. Each business operates with unique workflows, pricing structures, customer requirements, and operational constraints that affect how the integration should be configured. The difference between a smooth integration that enhances operations and an ongoing source of frustration often comes down to the expertise and approach of your implementation partner.

You may be using the default Orderwise eCommerce connector for your Shopify store right now. Rixxo is working on a more sophisticated and extensible Shopify Orderwise Plugin, codename Shopwise. For more details on this, you can reach out to Rixxo

Implementation Partners Often Determine Success

The conversations throughout the day reinforced something we see repeatedly in our work: while platform choice certainly matters, the implementation partner often determines whether a project succeeds or becomes an expensive source of ongoing problems.

Many of the integration challenges manufacturers described stem from rushed implementations, inadequate discovery processes, or working with partners who lack a deep understanding of both platforms and how they need to work together. When you’re ready to connect Orderwise with an eCommerce platform – whether Shopify, Magento, or another solution – the implementation approach should start with thoroughly understanding your business processes rather than jumping straight into technical configuration.

Too often, it sounds like it begins with an off-the-shelf “Orderwise Script” that meets the demands of an impatient business looking to the ERP to provide limitless connectivity. I think Orderwise to a great job of managing such demand, and there are only a handful of customers who how I would call it, get stuck. Many of them will find their way to an Orderwise partner or developer who can derive a more complex solution.

We often start integrations with the wrong questions. Like, what data do you want to move? Where do we sync this field? How often should it sync?

We should be asking questions more akin to:

• How do you handle pricing across different customer segments?
• What’s your approach to inventory management when selling through multiple channels?
• How do you want customer data and order history to flow between systems?

These operational questions should drive the technical configuration rather than being afterthoughts. Get the business logic right from the start, and the integration becomes a foundation for scalable growth. Rush through these decisions or get them wrong, and you’ll spend months developing workarounds that create more problems than they solve.

The Path Forward for UK Manufacturing

The manufacturers thriving today aren’t necessarily those with the most advanced technology or the biggest software budgets. They’re the businesses that have achieved seamless operational integration across their technology stack, allowing them to operate efficiently and respond quickly to market opportunities.

For manufacturers currently struggling with integration challenges or evaluating their platform options, the message from Orderwise Live was clear: success lies in the execution and integration approach, not just the underlying technology. The right platform, properly implemented and seamlessly integrated with your broader technology stack, becomes an operational advantage that enables growth. The wrong approach – regardless of how impressive the underlying technology might be – creates barriers that limit what your business can achieve.

All in all, I left this event absolutely pumped about ERP, manufacturing, and excited to see what Orderwise bring to the industry as Forterro transforms the business, adding exciting capabilities.

Here’s to next year.