Enterprise Administration > Windchill ESI > Introduction to ERP Connector
  
Introduction to ERP Connector
ERP Connector is a product designed to leverage current standard Windchill ESI capabilities on the Windchill side, without using any third-party EAI software.
This uni-directional integration enables the publication of product information stored in Windchill PDMLink to distribution targets in XML format. ERP Connector enables the transfer and mapping of business objects, such as parts, Bills of Material (BOMs), documents, CAD document structures, Change Notices (CNs), option sets, manufacturing objects and resources, from Windchill to the distribution targets, and also serves as the foundation for more advanced transaction-managed integrations.
Connecting ERP and Windchill systems optimizes and automates business processes, improves operational efficiencies, and creates opportunities to add value not available with isolated systems. By controlling seamless information flow between functional groups, such as engineering and manufacturing and their respective enterprise applications, it ensures that:
Latest product data information is represented in both systems and changes to product data are automatically reflected in the distribution target.
Latest design revisions are always available to manufacturing.
Downstream services, such as logistics, finance, after-market support that depend upon and use ERP systems, are also up-to-date.
ERP Connector can be customized manually to support unique business processes that are not provided in its default set of functions.