Why Omnichannel Sync Breaks Even When Everything Looks Connected

The Sync Problem No One Notices Until It Is Too Late

If there is one technical phrase that sounds harmless but ruins more growth plans than bad ad spending, it is channel sync. It sounds like something that should just happen quietly in the background. You connect Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, and your warehouse. You map SKUs. You press save. You assume everything is going to behave like a tidy little automation loop. Then you wake up one morning to discover Amazon oversold three SKUs, Shopify backordered two, Walmart unlisted one, and your operational sanity evaporated overnight.

Brands do not fail at syncing because they are careless. They fail because omnichannel sync is not a feature. It is a fight. Every channel pushes its own timing, its own logic, and its own demands. Each one behaves as if it is the only system in your business that matters. A 2025 multichannel infrastructure review found that more than 62 percent of growing brands experienced sync drift at least twice a month. Drift is the polite word for data that quietly betrays you while smiling.

Customers do not care about drift, of course. They expect that when your website says something is in stock, it is actually in stock. Marketplaces care even less. They punish you instantly for slow syncs, incorrect quantities, and delayed updates. Retailers care the least. If an ASN is wrong, they assume you made a moral error, not a technical one. Sync is not optional. Sync is survival.

Why Sync Rarely Works the Way You Think It Does

Most sync failures trace back to one fundamental misunderstanding: channels were not designed to cooperate. Shopify sends data one way. Amazon demands updates its own way. Walmart has its own pace. Retailers operate in the structured but chaotic world of EDI. Trying to sync these systems through third party apps is like asking four people to dance together while listening to different music. They can all move. They cannot move together.

Most 3PLs make sync worse without realizing it. They rely on outdated WMS platforms that refresh inventory in batches instead of in real time. They use brittle integrations that lose data when a marketplace hiccups. They separate B2B and D2C systems, which means inventory lives in multiple worlds. When sync depends on several systems agreeing, and those systems do not update at the same speed, sync becomes a rumor rather than a truth.

Sync failures show up in predictable ways: phantom stock, overselling, delayed order flow, incorrect ATP availability, mismatched channel statuses, and retailer penalties. None of this happens because your brand is unprepared. It happens because your sync infrastructure is built on tools that were never designed for the pace of modern omnichannel commerce.

How Inventory Drift Becomes Sync Drift

Sync failures almost always begin with inventory. If your inventory truth is compromised, your sync truth cannot exist. The moment one system thinks you have 100 units, another thinks you have 60, and your warehouse thinks the inbound has not been received, you no longer have a sync problem. You have a reality problem.

Inventory drift happens when a system updates slowly, when inbound timing is uncertain, when B2B POs reserve stock incorrectly, or when a warehouse does not track movement at the scan level. Once drift begins, sync becomes reactive. The system tries to catch up to a moving target. That is how sync gets behind, and once behind, sync usually stays behind.

Where G10 Fixes Sync at the Source

G10 does not treat omnichannel sync like a settings menu. It treats it like the operational spine holding the whole organism together. Since 2009, G10 has supported brands selling across B2B, D2C, ecommerce, wholesale, retail, and fully compliant HAZMAT channels. Sync cannot be fragile in that environment. It has to be industrial.

The backbone of G10's sync stability is ChannelPoint, the proprietary WMS built for real time operations. Instead of syncing inventory after the fact, ChannelPoint updates stock at the moment of every scan, every pick, every inbound, and every movement. There is no lag. There is no drift. Every channel sees the same information because every channel pulls from the same source of truth.

As Bryan Wright, CTO and COO, explains it: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point you touch it. At any moment I know where the product sits, how it moved, and what it is connected to." Real sync begins here, not at the marketplace connector.

Integrations That Actually Understand Omnichannel

Real sync requires real integrations, not chains of apps duct taped together. G10 builds its integration layer to speak every major channel language fluently. Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, custom DTC sites, EDI retailers, flat file wholesalers, and unusual edge cases all feed directly into ChannelPoint rather than bouncing around through multiple systems.

As Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment, puts it: "We have experience with omni-channel integration setup and we are capable of doing any EDI, API, flat file, or XML integration needed throughout the omni-channel." That means sync is not a hope. It is a guarantee rooted in system design.

Why Network Design Matters for Sync Too

Sync is not only a software problem. It is a physical problem. If your warehouse network is slow, your sync will be slow. If inbound arrives late, your sync will be late. If your inventory is split across facilities that do not share a WMS, your sync becomes fiction instead of fact.

G10 avoids this failure mode entirely. Its network in Wisconsin, South Carolina, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada operates on the exact same WMS, with the same scanning rules and the same update speed. That makes sync easier, because sync only works when every node behaves predictably.

Director of Operations Holly Woods describes it simply: "Having strategically placed warehouses lets inbounds come in faster, which means we can get it distributed faster." Fast movement equals fast updates equals stable sync.

The Human Oversight Sync Always Required

Sync is partly a technical function and partly a human responsibility. Even the best systems need oversight, because channels change requirements constantly. A marketplace introduces a new API rule. A retailer alters ASN logic. Amazon changes inbound expectations. Without humans who understand the ecosystem, sync inevitably breaks at the edges.

G10 builds human intelligence into every account. Instead of sending customers through a ticketing maze, G10 gives each brand a direct contact in Delavan, Wisconsin with operational authority. As Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience, puts it: "Every account at G10 has a direct point of contact. You only have to reach out to one person, and they work with the teams internally to make sure we execute for you the right way."

The Moment Sync Finally Stops Fighting You

True omnichannel sync is not complicated. It is consistent. It is immediate. It is informed. It is complete. And it does not collapse the second your brand goes viral or signs a retailer. That is the version of sync G10 delivers, because that is the version of sync omnichannel brands actually need.

When you are ready for sync that does not drift, lag, guess, or gaslight you, G10 can give your brand the operational backbone it needs to move through omnichannel with confidence instead of fear.