Ambaum has helped many clients connect existing product data, inventory and order flows by building custom Shopify apps that integrate with these third-parties via APIs. In the automotive space much of the data lives in older proprietary databases or industry data interchanges (EDI); we map, normalize, and enrich that data so that it can be utilized on Shopify to quickly find matching parts.
“Data interchange” is the older umbrella term for systems exchanging information; in modern practice that almost always happens via APIs (though legacy EDI, file transfers and webhooks still exist). Today an interchange implies a defined contract or schema, secure transport (HTTPS, auth tokens), and clear error/validation rules. In short, one system calls another and both agree on request/response structure and operational expectations.
For example in the automotive space an App built by Ambaum ingests the VIN submitted by a customer on your Shopify Store, sends an API request to your partner interchange\data provider via the partner’s API which then returns structured vehicle data (year, make, model, trim, etc.) that Ambaum is able to surface to Shopify, and expose the correct products to the shopper.
In this example the VIN “interchange” includes input validation and an agreed response fields and formats (JSON or XML), these standards are what Ambaum relies on to build automotive Shopify Apps.
Sometimes more is needed than just a Shopify App to connect to an existing API \ Interchange. In such cases Ambaum will build the complete data interchange, including API integrations and a Shopify app to consolidate client data from disparate systems into a new custom database for the client, and thus allowing the client to utilize this data on Shopify when no existing API \ Interchange existed previously. The data utilized for such projects ranges from basic structured data such as XML, JSON, and CSV to non-structured data that must be extracted from multiple sources (HTTP, FTP, Etc…) organized and structured and then utilized by the new interchange and ultimately surfaced in Shopify to be utilized and viewed by the customer.
