# What is a service connector?

## Overview

This section contains content to help you work with connectors.  A **connector** is the means by which Patchworks links to one of your business systems - it's how we store your system credentials in a single, easy-to-manage place.

As a business, you're likely to use a range of systems - for example, you might be:

* selling products on Shopify
* stocking goods on Peoplevox
* managing financial accounts on Netsuite

You'll probably need to sync data between these three systems, but you only need to create a single Patchworks connector for each one - then you define [services](/product-documentation/patchworks-services/getting-started/what-is-a-service.md) to use these connectors in whatever data flows you need.

The illustration below helps to visualise this:

![](/files/xvHISlK5z6tD0K293ITB)

And if you need to change authentication credentials for a system, you only need to update your single connector - all your services will update automatically.


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