We are looking to expand our operations and onboard a new 3PL. We have current integrations with a 3PL, but are looking to standardize for future growth. I'd love any recommendations on how to build 3PL integrations to scale (e.g. EDI, third party tool, netsuite connector)

NovaModule has a few prebuilt ones. Also you could build your own using Celigo Usually some sort of 3rd party tool like Celigo or Boomi is a good way to go to have error handling capabilities.

Boomi/Celigo are also recurring fees so I would do a cost analysis on creating an integration yourself vs buying something off the shelf. Most of the time, people just need a few fields to transfer over and wind up paying a ton of money to one of these middle mans.

Every 3PL's capabilities are different. Some can do EDI, some prefer API and then there are the SFTP only crowd. I see more and more moving towards the API approach. For any pre-built integration/connectors, you will be limited to the response times of the vendor and the limitations of their product offering which you'll have to treat as a "black box". You can build your own API endpoints and integrate 3PLs with your team in control of the standards.

I have worked with two clients on this and I agree with Eric - the integration requirements are not standardized at this point. Assuming you are integrating order processing and inventory movement so you can support Available to Promise to customers? You have probably already done this but I would get a scope of long term automation requirements (domestic only? international? multiple distribution points? Amazon?) to help inform your solution.

Thanks everyone for your feedback! We plan to have integrations for PO receipts, inventory snapshots, outbound shipment requests and outbound ship advices. Nothing too complicated. My hunch was to just build it in house (as we did with our existing 3PL), but wanted to cover my bases in case there was a provider/standard we could follow. Thanks!