Patchworks CEO Shows How to Integrate NetSuite

Patchworks CEO Shows How to Integrate NetSuite

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• Michael Mueller, e-Commerce Account Executive at Anchor Group
• Jim Herbert, CEO at Patchworks
• Jon Rodgers, VP of Partnerships, North America at Patchworks
• Anchor Group (Company Page)

Podcast Recap:

NetSuite Integrations Made Fast: Anchor Group Podcast with Patchworks

~43 min listen

Most businesses know they need to connect NetSuite to the rest of their software stack — the question is how to do it without a months-long project and a team of developers. In this episode, Michael from Anchor Group sits down with Jim Herbert, CEO of Patchworks, and Jon Rodgers, VP of North America Partnerships, to break down what modern integration actually looks like when it's built right.

What Patchworks is (and why the plumbing analogy works)

Patchworks is an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) — the connective layer between NetSuite and everything else: Shopify storefronts, CRMs, marketplaces, 3PLs, point-of-sale systems. It's true SaaS — no installation, no CDs, just create an account and start connecting. Jim describes it as "technical plumbing": you want it to install quickly, work reliably, and be flexible enough to add new lines without redoing the whole house. Over 160 connectors are available in their marketplace, and if what you need isn't there, a Connector Builder lets you import a Postman collection and build a custom one in minutes.

Why NetSuite customers specifically benefit

Patchworks currently serves around 130 NetSuite customers, and the team has deep platform knowledge — not just surface-level familiarity. That matters because NetSuite has its quirks: concurrency limits, custom fields, and the need for persistent message queuing when systems go down. Patchworks built connection pooling specifically to manage NetSuite concurrency, so high-volume operations don't hit a wall. Their Shopify-to-NetSuite blueprint was specifically called out by Shopify in their Winter B2B edition release — and Patchworks is the only certified tech partner for integrations in that release.

Speed and flexibility that actually delivers

One customer went live in 14 days using a blueprint. Another migrated off a competitor whose contract renewal came in at three to five times the previous price — and had their BigCommerce-to-NetSuite connection running before the old contract even expired. Every flow in Patchworks is versioned, meaning you can roll back or forward to any version without losing your work. And the no-code canvas — drag, drop, connect — means a logically-minded team member, not a Java developer, can build and modify flows.

The AI layer: MCP server and Claude integration

Patchworks recently shipped a hosted MCP server that connects its integration layer to LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT. Early adopters are already querying their flow logs conversationally and getting AI-generated recommendations — including proactive suggestions about upcoming NetSuite tax changes. Jim sees this as the next major shift: agentic workflows that remap flows during migrations, surface operational insights across millions of daily transactions, and reduce manual intervention throughout the entire integration lifecycle.

What most people get wrong about integration projects

Discovery matters more than most teams expect. Jim recommends talking directly to the people on the floor, not just leadership — because manual workarounds (rekeying data into a spreadsheet, printing and re-entering records) are common and rarely visible from the top. He also recommends the "Strangler Fig" pattern: rather than migrating everything at once, run old and new systems in parallel using Patchworks to route by geography or order type, then flip the switch when the new environment is proven. You deliver business value immediately, reduce risk, and see ROI before the full migration is done.

Bottom line

Integration is no longer just about moving data from A to B. Patchworks is building toward a model where the integration layer becomes a strategic asset — one that surfaces insights, supports AI-assisted operations, and accelerates digital transformation instead of stalling it. For NetSuite shops looking to connect their stack without a six-month implementation, it's worth a serious look.

Podcast Transcript:

Michael Mueller (00:00)

Hey everybody, thank you for tuning into this episode of the Anchor Group podcast. If you're somebody who uses NetSuite as your ERP and you need to connect it to third-party software outside of the NetSuite environment, this podcast episode is going to be for you. There are many ways you can integrate NetSuite with external platforms, and doing so is very important for today's modern businesses. Today's a special episode because we're talking with the team from Patchworks. Patchworks powers many companies' integrations where NetSuite is the foundational ERP. It's important because there's a lot going on in the NetSuite ecosystem, so you want to make sure you're going with an integration provider that actually knows how NetSuite works. Today, it's going to be evident that this team knows how NetSuite works. If you're on NetSuite and you need an integration, stay tuned — this is going to be a good episode for you.

Once again, everyone, thank you for tuning into the Anchor Group podcast. Today we have Jim Herbert and Jon Rodgers on from the Patchworks team. Jim is the CEO at Patchworks and has a career full of experience in the integration space. Jon is the Patchworks VP of North America Partnerships and also brings years of experience working in the software ecosystem. Jim and Jon, welcome to the Anchor Group Podcast.

Jim Herbert (01:58)

Thanks for having us, Michael.

Jon Rodgers (02:00)

Thanks for having us, Mike.

Michael Mueller (02:00)

It is fantastic to have you both on today. As we get things rolling — careers over time take turns. Jim, how did you end up in your role as CEO at Patchworks?

Jim Herbert (02:15)

It's been a long and varied career. I've been programming computers since I was eight years old and made a career of it — computer science degree at university, working in banks, integrating things into the New York Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange. I got into e-commerce almost as soon as it started. In 1999, I built my first ever e-commerce website using a piece of software from Boston called ATG — I'm sure some people listening will remember it. I ended up running my own systems integration firm called Scenery, founded in 2007. We were quite active in the ATG space and later the SAP Commerce space, delivering well over 100 implementations. We were eventually acquired by Sapient, which was a bit of a full-circle moment — I'd started my career at Cambridge Technology Partners in the mid-90s, and Sapient was a shoot-off of that. Fast forward to COVID: I became the general manager for BigCommerce EMEA, running their European expansion for three years. I met Jon at one of our sales kickoffs in Austin in 2022. One of the things I discovered at BigCommerce was the sheer number of ERP platforms across different geographies — it's a real challenge for a US tech vendor to integrate them all. I came across Patchworks, loved the team, had the opportunity to come on board, and I've been here since January 2023.

Michael Mueller (04:03)

Amazing — what a trajectory. Jon, how about you? How did you end up in the partnership space at Patchworks?

Jon Rodgers (04:18)

I was in telecom for about 10 to 12 years before making the jump into e-commerce. I started on the agency side — I was a director of business development for a BigCommerce Partner of the Year and a Magento Partner of the Year. Several years diving into the platforms, learning e-commerce. Once I got in, I was fully immersed. I then spent five years at BigCommerce managing one of the partnership teams for North America and Latin America before coming over to Patchworks in August. For me, it was the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a disruptive company. I could see there was a ton of value and a real need for more modern, more flexible solutions. And it was a great opportunity to work with Jim again.

Michael Mueller (05:28)

And here you are today on the Anchor Group podcast. I always find those backgrounds so interesting, because what I think is undervalued when vetting software is what's behind it. In this age of AI, software is popping up everywhere. On the agency side, we help companies implement not just NetSuite but integration platforms as well — and you want to make sure the people building the software actually get it. That's clear from your experience.

Jim Herbert (06:15)

Thanks, Michael. It's interesting — everyone says you can just write integrations with AI, and technically you can, just as you could always write them in code. But I'm old enough to remember the first Black Friday and what that was like. You need your integration to scale with order volume during events like that. You need it to be secure and robust. Classically in integration, if you hit a concurrency limit in NetSuite and it stops receiving messages, you need to make sure those messages keep coming through so orders and fulfillment data aren't lost. Systems do go down. We've had 99.99% uptime over the last 14 months, which I'm proud of — but we still plan for failure. Messages are stored persistently so they can be picked up and pushed through when systems come back online. Those are hard lessons from integration, and they're the underlying foundations on which Patchworks is built. The vision on top of that is to make it as quick and easy to go live with integration as possible.

Michael Mueller (07:42)

Let's get into the weeds — that's where a lot of the power is. For someone who knows they need a NetSuite integration but doesn't fully understand how Patchworks fits in, can you give a high-level overview of what Patchworks is and how it works?

Jim Herbert (08:12)

Sure. We're a piece of software known as an integration platform as a service — iPaaS. We're SaaS-based, so there's no installation. We reach a commercial agreement, create an account, and you start integrating. Think of it as technical plumbing. If you're in NetSuite and you want to connect to Amazon, eBay, a CRM, or an e-commerce platform, Patchworks is the pipe work in between. And what you want from your plumbing — if I stretch the analogy — is for it to install quickly, work reliably, and be flexible enough that you can add new connections easily. NetSuite is your boiler. Patchworks is the plumbing. It's an enterprise service bus for your business, where all the data flows reliably between your systems.

Michael Mueller (09:31)

In modern business, that's critically important. We see a lot of companies catching up to the modern era, still doing things manually — exporting, importing. Connecting systems through Patchworks automates those processes. Since this is a NetSuite-focused episode, Jon — how has Patchworks fit into the NetSuite ecosystem, and how do you serve those customers?

Jon Rodgers (10:16)

NetSuite is an interesting ecosystem because the companies using it are serious about their operations. They've grown past basic tools and need their systems to perform. But NetSuite doesn't live in a vacuum — you've got Shopify storefronts, third-party logistics, point-of-sale systems, and they all need to sync together. Patchworks slots right into that world. We have around 130 NetSuite customers today, and we understand the platform deeply. We're also a Shopify tech partner at the highest tier — Shopify specifically called us out in their Winter B2B release, based on our Shopify-to-NetSuite blueprint. That kind of validation shows what we've built here.

Michael Mueller (11:07)

At Anchor Group, we see that echoed in our own work. The blueprints are a real value-add — for those listening who aren't familiar, a blueprint is essentially a pre-built set of flows that give you a foundation to build from. It speeds up implementation significantly, and the reason it works is because Patchworks actually understands how NetSuite is structured. So let's step under the hood — Jim, what are some of the key features of Patchworks that you think are worth knowing about?

Jim Herbert (12:16)

The key thing is the user experience. When Patchworks was conceived, the two options for integration were either writing code or using other iPaaS platforms — both had real costs. Developers are expensive. The vision for Patchworks was to make a no-code, low-code integration platform where you don't need a Java, Node, Python, or Rust developer. You just need someone who can think logically. I had an agency owner at the BigCommerce EMEA conference in 2023 — six weeks after I joined — tell me they wanted their front-end JavaScript developers to be able to do integrations. That's the whole idea.

The no-code, low-code canvas is drag-and-drop and best-in-class. On top of that, you have blueprints — pre-built architecture for common setups like NetSuite plus Shopify. We're the only certified Shopify tech partner for integrations, which I'm proud of. Those flows are ready to go and fully customizable. We have customers with 237 custom product fields in NetSuite, and they can expose those through the NetSuite connector so they're available for mapping across the system.

For partners and agencies, our Connector Builder lets you import Postman collections or OpenAPI specs to build a connector for any system. We have over 160 connectors in the marketplace, but if something isn't there, Connector Builder covers it — even legacy web services.

For enterprise users specifically: we built connection pooling to manage NetSuite concurrency. One customer in New York had a low concurrency limit on their NetSuite account — rather than spending money to increase it, the pooling mechanism drip-feeds messages in and out across the arc.

Finally, our MCP server — released about four weeks ago — allows customers to connect their NetSuite environment directly to Claude, ChatGPT, and other LLMs through Patchworks. We saw 10% adoption in the first two weeks. NetSuite customers are taking screenshots of Claude proactively suggesting flow adjustments for upcoming tax changes. Agents are becoming another user experience cohort for us — we need to make sure we have a great experience for both humans and agents.

Michael Mueller (16:37)

That all shows real value. You've seen a lot of companies go through integrations — what are some of the hidden things people should keep in mind? Any cobwebs in the corners that people should be cautious about?

Jim Herbert (17:19)

There always are. Good discovery is critical. If you're the business owner or CEO, everything seems to just work — how hard can it be? But when you go talk to the people actually doing the work — the person in the warehouse, the one entering orders — that's where you find out that some piece of software everyone thought was automated is actually being printed out and manually rekeyed into a separate system someone bought without telling IT. So: talk to the workers, not just leadership.

Plan carefully, and consider the Strangler Fig pattern — you don't have to boil the ocean. One customer we have was running a $200 million business almost entirely on spreadsheets. Another is migrating from an old ERP to NetSuite by launching their European business on NetSuite first, using Patchworks to route European orders to NetSuite and the rest to the old ERP. Once they've proven NetSuite works, all they have to do is remove the routing rule in Patchworks and everything flows through. You start delivering value immediately, you see ROI straight away, and the risk is manageable.

Michael Mueller (19:37)

Business value is where the rubber meets the road on these projects — that's the most important thing. And Patchworks isn't just for Shopify, right? You're platform-agnostic?

Jon Rodgers (20:26)

That's correct — fully platform-agnostic. We recently had a client on BigCommerce and NetSuite whose integration vendor increased prices by three to five times at contract renewal. They needed to move fast. Our sell cycle took a week, and they'll be fully up and running before their existing contract expires — enough time for QA and testing. In under a month, their BigCommerce-to-NetSuite connection will be live.

Michael Mueller (21:13)

That's powerful. Time is money.

Jon Rodgers (21:22)

Especially today, when finding profit margin is increasingly difficult.

Jim Herbert (21:33)

We had a customer go live in 14 days last year. They were a London-based luxury fashion brand — about $50 million, one of the UK's top 20 fastest-growing companies. They were importing to the US and needed to move quickly when the tariff situation changed. One of our agency partners used a blueprint and had them live and trading in 14 days, which meant they were positioned before the tariffs hit and were able to reroute through a US entity using an internal stock transfer. They did a lot of PR around it — they were proud of how quickly they moved.

Michael Mueller (22:39)

Jim, you mentioned the low-code, no-code experience. Since this is also on YouTube, would you be willing to walk us through a demo?

Jim Herbert (23:09)

Absolutely. This is a clean demo environment I set up this morning — I'll call it the Patchworks Anchor demo. We're true multi-tenant SaaS: all I have to do is click "switch companies," create a company, and it's live. That's also powerful for partners — you can create and manage all your clients from within your own dashboard once the commercial deal is done.

On the left-hand side, you can see the different areas of functionality. If I go to Marketplace and click Connectors, you can filter by category. Let's say you want to see marketplaces — Amazon, eBay, regional platforms. Or e-commerce and CRM. I've got NetSuite and Shopify installed. If I wanted to add Magento, I just click Install — and it's done. Then I put in my authentication details and I'm connecting. That's how straightforward it is.

The Marketplace also includes process flows — free, ready-to-use templates — and scripts for common tasks like converting a CSV to JSON. Scripts support virtually any language: Node, PHP, Perl, C#, Rust, Go. If a language isn't there, raise it with us and we can configure it. Scripts are also AI-powered — you prompt it, give it an example payload, and it builds the script.

I've already installed the Shopify-NetSuite B2B blueprint while we've been talking — no one wants to watch a blueprint install in real time. You can see the flows: catalog and pricing sync, creating and updating companies and contacts, syncing locations, handling refunds. You don't have to use every flow — you can view and select only what applies to you.

If I open the Shopify-to-NetSuite sales order creation flow, this is our new drag-and-drop canvas. Every flow is versioned — you can view version history, copy versions between environments, deploy to production or a sandbox, and roll back or forward to any version. That's a relatively unique capability.

Let me create an order in Shopify — I'll find a product and a customer, create an order, and then run the integration flow manually. I'll click Initialize Flow. The trigger here is scheduled every hour, but it can also be a webhook, an event queue like RabbitMQ, or Apache Kafka. Now it's running — you can see the step indicators appearing. If I click into the payload and select pretty print, you can see the order data coming through and the final confirmation that it's been inserted into NetSuite. And there it is — the order is in NetSuite. That all happened while we've been on the podcast.

Now, what if you want to customize? On the drag-and-drop canvas, you can drag in new shapes, connect them, delete steps, and build from scratch. Some customers are now using the canvas directly as their diagramming tool before connecting real systems. The canvas also supports copy-paste — if you have multiple branches that do similar things, you can copy shapes from one branch and paste them into another. Within branch shapes, you can add conditions like "paid orders" vs "unpaid orders" and route accordingly. Auto-layout keeps it clean, and you can switch between top-down (which we prefer — it's more intuitive for tablet users) or left-to-right if that's what you're used to.

Lastly — the MCP server. I can now ask Claude directly: "Where is order 1041? Is it in Patchworks?" It goes off, checks the flow data and run logs, and comes back with confirmation: one successful flow run, the order was created in NetSuite. That's what our customers are starting to use in production — querying their integration layer through an LLM without ever opening the dashboard.

In the run logs, every single execution is stored. We keep payloads for a couple of days by default, or they can be sent to an S3 bucket for longer retention. You can drill down to see where things are breaking, identify which systems are consistently slow, and use an LLM to help optimize those bottlenecks.

That's the quick tour. Happy to take questions.

Michael Mueller (36:15)

Jim, that was very useful. For those of you listening, I'd encourage you to go back and watch that section — let the gravity of that tool hit you. What Jim just walked through isn't just data migration. You can plug in an LLM like Claude to analyze your data and surface insights in real time. And the visual flow builder — it looks and feels like Lucidchart or draw.io, which are already widely used in this ecosystem. That matters for adoption. At Anchor Group, we don't just want to catch fish for our clients — we want to teach them to fish. Patchworks empowers the team using it because the learning curve is genuinely manageable. The value isn't just that data goes from A to B. It can be much, much more than that.

Jim, thanks for walking us through that. Now, as we start to wrap up: what are you each most excited about in the world of integrations right now?

Jim Herbert (38:06)

The agentic piece is really interesting to me, for two reasons. On the build side — can an agent remap all my flows into NetSuite when I'm migrating from one CRM to another? The killer use case is: you give the agent your old flows, it remaps them for the new destination, versions them, and puts a human in the loop for testing before anything goes live. That's genuinely exciting.

But on the other side — the run side — large language models are built for large datasets. We have customers doing millions of transactions a day, sometimes across multiple accounts. The ability for those customers to get real insights into that data, and use it to sell more and save money, is where I see the biggest long-term value.

Jon Rodgers (39:40)

For me, it comes down to customer satisfaction. Integration has historically been the thing that stalls digital transformation projects — it slows down deal cycles and freezes everything. What excites me is Patchworks becoming a deal accelerator instead. Everyone knows they need these tools. A lot of teams are frozen — they know change is necessary, but the price and complexity have made it feel impossible. We can come in, reduce that tech debt, get systems connected, and free up revenue in other areas of the business. That helps merchants, and it helps agency partners move more projects through their pipeline. My role is to show up and play a good part in enabling that for everyone.

Michael Mueller (41:08)

At the end of the day, it's about empowering the merchants who use Patchworks to reach their business goals. From today's conversation, it's clear that Patchworks is a strong integration platform — especially for companies on NetSuite who need to connect to third-party systems. From the blueprints, to the ease of use, to the way flows come together visually, it's a platform that can work for a wide range of teams without a steep learning curve. Jim and Jon, where can people go to learn more or connect with you?

Jim Herbert (41:59)

Follow us on LinkedIn, and head to patchworks.io — that will redirect to our current site where you'll find documentation, links to our YouTube channel, and everything else. I'm based in the UK, Jon's based in the US — we're always available for a conversation.

Jon Rodgers (42:28)

Find me on LinkedIn — I have a scheduling button at the top of my profile. My calendar is your calendar. Always happy to have great conversations and meet new people.

Michael Mueller (42:39)

And if you want an agency perspective, feel free to reach out to us at Anchor Group — we're always happy to connect. Jim, Jon, thank you so much for joining the Anchor Group podcast. For all of you listening, thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, share and subscribe — we'll have more episodes like this with solid information for the NetSuite ecosystem. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode.

Jim Herbert (43:18)

Thanks, Michael.

Jon Rodgers (43:19)

Thanks, Michael.

Where to Listen to the Podcast

Find more episodes of the Anchor Group podcast!

• Anchor Group Podcast on Spotify
• Anchor Group Podcast on YouTube

Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner, BigCommerce Certified Partner

As both a BigCommerce Certified Partner and an Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner, Anchor Group is ready to handle BigCommerce and NetSuite projects alike! Whether you already have one platform and are looking to integrate the other, are considering a full-scale implementation of both platforms, or simply need support with ongoing customizations, our team is ready to help answer any questions you might have! Get in touch!