5 Signs Your E-commerce Brand Needs An ERP
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- Why Spreadsheets Won't Cut It Anymore
- Symptoms That Scream "Upgrade Needed!"
- Luminous: Your Path to Scalable Inventory Management
Congratulations! Your e-commerce brand is booming, and big-box retailers are taking notice. Expanding to new sales channels offers exciting opportunities, but it also introduces complexity. Here's how to know when it's time to upgrade your inventory management system from spreadsheets to an ERP.
Why Spreadsheets Won't Cut It Anymore
Jared Ward, Founder and CEO of Luminous, a scalable ERP system designed for modern e-commerce brands, highlights the dangers of relying on cobbled-together solutions like ShipStation and Google Sheets. Managing multiple channels with different SKUs quickly becomes a forecasting nightmare.
Symptoms That Scream "Upgrade Needed!"
- Inventory Inconsistency: Customers see "in stock" messages, only to receive out-of-stock notifications later. Conversely, products listed as unavailable might be hiding in your warehouse.
- Long Order Cycles: Birthday gifts arrive late, and seasonal items miss the holidays entirely due to sluggish order processing.
- Rising Operational Costs: Frequent expedited shipping due to stock mismanagement and staffing issues caused by inaccurate demand forecasting drain your resources.
- Supply Chain Blind Spots: Unexpected stockouts plague you because your system lacks low-inventory alerts.
- Reporting and Analytics Challenges: Replenishing FBA stock, determining purchase quantities, and forecasting wholesale orders become nearly impossible.
Don't let growth become a stumbling block. These are all signs that your e-commerce brand has outgrown its current inventory management system. A robust ERP can streamline operations, boost efficiency, and empower informed decision-making.
Want to learn more about how Jared Ward overcame these challenges and scaled his e-commerce business? Watch his full video for e-commerce tips and strategies to help you navigate explosive growth!
Luminous: Your Path to Scalable Inventory Management
Don't wait for a million-dollar mistake to cripple your growth. Luminous offers a user-friendly, affordable ERP solution specifically designed for the needs of modern e-commerce businesses. We've helped hundreds of brands streamline their inventory and supply chain, saving them significant time and money. Book a demo today and start scaling your brand.
Video transcript
When does your e-commerce brand need an ERP? Here are five signals telling you it's time to implement an inventory system.
All your favorite e-commerce brands are expanding to big-box retailers at a faster pace every single year. With so many retailers like Walmart and Target, or just general wholesale options, there's so much opportunity for these fast-growing e-commerce brands. This growth presents really good opportunities: you can expand your revenue and you can expand your channels. But these new revenue streams bring on tons of complexity.
Hi guys, my name is Jared. I'm the founder and CEO of Luminous, a scalable, easy-to-use ERP and inventory management system for the modern e-commerce brand. Follow my content for weekly videos, tips and tricks on how to scale your commerce business, and follow along as I build the number one inventory management and supply chain tool for e-commerce.
The reality is, the more channels you add, the more complex your inventory distribution and fulfillment become. You need better data, better reporting, forecasting and invoicing. And when that massive spike in Q4 comes along, one simple forecasting or invoicing error can cost you millions of dollars. Trust me, I've been there, and it's no fun.
When I was CEO of a multichannel e-commerce company, we always struggled to forecast for Q4. We always knew we were leaving potentially millions of dollars on the table just by not purchasing the right amount of our top-selling products. We just weren't properly replenishing and forecasting those top SKUs. It was impossible to Frankenstein a forecast together from 10 different channels, using different SKUs, all on top of ShipStation and Google Sheets. It just didn't work.
At some point we came to the conclusion that we needed an actual inventory system, a system of record. ShipStation and Google Sheets just weren't cutting it. As we demoed all these systems, it felt like they were made for $100 million companies. It felt like complete overkill, like we were gambling the entire existence of our company to implement an ERP, system of record or inventory management system. They were quoting around $70,000 in upfront implementation costs and around $10,000 a month in SaaS fees. This is actually why I built Luminous.
Here are some symptoms that are basically your business telling you it's time to upgrade your tech stack or change your inventory system.
1. Inventory problems
A customer comes to your website, sees a product showing in stock and buys it. Afterwards they get a pitiful message apologizing that the product is actually out of stock. Another example is the inverse: the product shows as out of stock on the website, but the warehouse team magically finds 100 units collecting dust in a corner. This happens all the time. Just ask an e-commerce operator.
2. Long order cycles
A customer orders a birthday gift well in advance, but it arrives a week after the birthday because the system lagged somewhere. Or seasonal items, like Christmas purchases, arrive in January because of processing delays across your systems, or data that's communicated incorrectly and leads to longer lead times.
3. Increased operational expenses
The company frequently pays for expedited shipping to fulfill orders because of stock mismanagement. Or it overstaffs during slow periods and understaffs during peak times, due to a lack of proper demand forecasting.
4. Poor visibility into your supply chain
You keep getting unexpected stockouts because the system doesn't alert you to low inventory.
5. Challenges in reporting and analytics
"It's really difficult for me to replenish my FBA stock." "It's really difficult to know how many I should purchase." "Ever since I started wholesale, it's just impossible to get my forecasting right."
If your e-commerce brand is experiencing any of these symptoms, it's time to start looking for a system of record or an inventory system. The last thing you want is to grow too quickly and make a million-dollar mistake that could put you out of business or set you back years.
If you're experiencing any of these things, come book a demo with me. I'd love to chat. Luminous is here to help, at joinluminous.com. We've helped hundreds of brands scale their inventory and supply chain, and we have clients saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just by using Luminous and getting all their data in order. Thanks guys, bye.