The sign that you have outgrown spreadsheets
A spreadsheet is an excellent tool, and many companies get further with one than consultants expect. The problem is not the program, it is the number of copies.
The turning point is easy to recognise: nobody knows which file is the current one, two people edit the same row at the same time, and a report for management costs half a day of matching columns.
- The same figure exists in three places, with three different values
- Someone remembers rules that are written down nowhere
- One person going on holiday blocks an entire process
- You cannot give someone access to part of the data without handing over the whole file
What such a system usually covers
We do not build a complete ERP in the first version. We start with the area that hurts most and extend it once people already use it daily.
- A catalogue of products, partners and prices with a single source of truth
- Stock per warehouse, with receipts, issues, transfers and stocktaking
- Customer and supplier orders, each with its own status
- Approval flows by value, by department or by document type
- Production or job tracking, in your real stages
- Reports that generate themselves instead of being assembled by hand
Moving off spreadsheets without stopping the business
No company can stand still for a month while a new system is set up. So the migration happens in pieces: we import the existing data, run both versions in parallel for a while in the new area, and switch over completely only once people trust the figures.
The old files stay accessible as an archive. Nothing is deleted until you confirm the system produces the same results.