From Chaos to Clarity: Why Growing Companies Outgrow Excel in 2025

I have seen many companies with revenue over $10M still managing their operations in Excel. It is both frightening and fascinating at the same time.

To be fair, I use Excel myself almost every day. It is a fantastic tool for quick calculations, testing ideas, or making one-off forecasts. For these purposes, Excel is unbeatable. But when it comes to managing a growing company, Excel fails. It was never designed to run an entire business.

At ERPixel, we help companies move from Excel into a modern ERP environment based on Odoo. We implement systems fast, with quality, and always keep business processes in focus. Schedule a Call with us.

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The Example: How Procurement Runs on Spreadsheets

Let’s imagine a Procurement Manager — let’s call him Michael.

Michael tries to keep everything inside one big Excel file. This file includes all the supplier data: products, prices, minimum order quantities, delivery terms, payment conditions, currencies, and even pickup addresses.

On another sheet in the same file, Michael makes sales forecasts and weekly demand calculations. Right next to that, he calculates warehouse stock levels and tries to decide how much to purchase from which supplier in order to meet the shipping plan.

The file is constantly updated not only by Michael, but also by other buyers on his team. They add new suppliers, update prices, record vendor responses, and add comments about stock. Surprisingly, this setup can work for months or even years.

But there is a problem. In fact, there are several.

1. Every change requires enormous attention. If one formula is broken, the whole system stops working.
2. A new urgent project or a new client? Michael needs to create a new sheet and rework everything.
3. Vacations or sick leave become almost impossible. Michael cannot be easily replaced.
4. One frustrated employee can delete all the data in a second. Nobody likes to think about it, but it is a real risk.
5. Michael becomes the “key person” in the company. Without him, everything falls apart.

This is not complete chaos yet, but it is a very heavy and risky way to run operations. It directly affects business performance.

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Why Excel Still Survives

If Excel is so fragile, why do so many companies still depend on it? The reasons are simple:

1. Simplicity – it is easy to start and very fast for small tasks. Formulas can do miracles.
2. Availability – everyone studied it in school or university. There is always someone nearby who can help.
3. Cost – Excel is almost free and usually comes pre-installed with a new laptop.

Excel is not a bad tool. But it has serious limitations when used for managing a company.

Every company has at least one “Excel guru.” This is the person who knows exactly how the magic VLOOKUP formula works, and without them, the file never works correctly.

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Why Companies Move Away from Excel

Eventually, businesses understand that Excel cannot keep up with their growth. Here is why:

1. No processes. Excel is just a table, not a workflow. You can store data, but you cannot build real business processes around it.
2. No control. You cannot audit, verify, or track what is happening inside the file. Excel does not notify you of anything.
3. No trust from investors. You cannot give spreadsheets to investors or board members as proof of performance. They want professional reports, not thousands of rows.

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What Happens When You Move to ERP

This is where ERP comes in.

At ERPixel, we help companies migrate from Excel into ERP systems. The beauty of this process is that you have already done part of the work. If your business fits inside an Excel file, it will definitely work better inside an ERP system.

The steps look like this:

• We take your spreadsheets.
• We analyze the data.
• We split it into catalogs (suppliers, products, price lists, etc.).
• We import it into the ERP system.

In Michael’s case, the migration would look like this:

• Supplier catalog.
• Price lists and delivery terms.
• Product catalog.
• Sales forecasting module.
• Manufacturing and stock planning.

It takes some time, but the result is much more powerful than any Excel file. Now you have not only data, but also processes, security, and scalability.

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Immediate Benefits of ERP

When companies move from Excel to ERP, the benefits are visible immediately:

• Faster search. Find any data instantly.
• Better security. Data is protected and cannot be broken by accident.
• Processes. Every step looks like a document that can be approved, checked, and confirmed.
• Communication. ERP has built-in communication tools for inside and outside the company.
• Professional reporting. Investors will appreciate the quality of financial and operational reports.
• Replaceability. Employees can be replaced without fear of losing business-critical knowledge.

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Conclusion

Excel will probably live forever. It will always be useful for small calculations and quick experiments. But for managing a growing company, Excel is simply not enough.

If you are still running your core business on spreadsheets, now is the right time to explore modern ERP systems.

1. Start by reading about ERP options on the market — there are solutions for every budget.
2. Or contact us directly at ERPixel. We will help you estimate the cost and steps for moving from Excel to ERP.

We can do it fast and with quality. Especially if you need it done yesterday 🙂