I am part of a family business that has run for nearly 40 years.

The business has mainly been “running as we always have done”.

And when it comes to the development and further improvement of a small business, the inner family fights start with the new generations ideas of “better ways of doing things”.

It is not a secret of family businesses, that some of its main struggles are the ideas that we, the second generation, bring up to the table so that the business can change for better.

Or at least, we the second generation, think those ideas are for better.

In my experience, change will bring up discomfort, specially for older generations, since they have been working for years in the same way, and it might take some time to adapt or they might even refuse the new ideas, even if you give projections on income increase or savings.

How many times have you heard, “if your business don’t adapt or innovate, it will get stuck or disappear”.

Probably, plenty of times.

One of the pain points that I have lived for sure in my own family business is the control of inventory.

We have used from manual scorecards to keep control, to later move on to the inventory management in excel.

Does an inventory management in excel is effective in the long run?

I don’t think so, but it was the quick and low cost solution for a small business to have control on the inventory.

If you are looking for how to do your inventory management in excel, here the team and I, created this article where you can learn about inventory management and how to create an inventory management in excel.

But I would also recommend you, that if you are planning to digitize your business and improve your inventory control processes, then analyze the use and implementation of an ERP System.

I tell you a bit more of my experience.

I needed a solution that helped me with a Point of Sale system, to keep track and control of inventory on an easier way, but also a system that was also connected to an e-commerce platform.

Therefore, here in Mexico I decided to use Bind ERP.

As a small business, Bind ERP was an affordable solution that I started to use.

In just a matter of 2 weeks, I set up all the nearly 170 products of the branch store that I am in charge, and in one week I built up the Shopify store to showcase online the products of my store online and on social media.

Now, everytime I receive new inventory, make a sale or change up the price of a product, the ERP system updates automatically as well on Shopify and Facebook Shop.

As a small business, there are already affordable ERP solutions that can help you have this integrations and help you to save time on updating your Excel Spreadsheets everytime you do a sell, or also to save time on the uploading and managing of products on your e-commerce store.

So I would recommend, if you prefer to still save up costs and keep using excel, create your inventory template.

But if you are like me, that besides just managing your business locally, and also want to have an e-commerce platform that helps you on the digitalization of your business, then go for ERP systems like BindERP (if you are from Latin America), Odoo & Quickbooks that also have integrations with WooCommerce and Shopify.

Read more in: Inventory Management in Excel.