10 Signs You Need an eCommerce ERP in 2025

Picture this: You're Lidl, a grocery empire with €80 billion in annual revenue. 

You've got the best people, the best software partner (SAP), and a clear vision for your new inventory system. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Half a billion euros. That's what went wrong.

Let that sink in for a moment. €500 million spent on an ERP system that never saw the light of day. 

A thousand staff members, hundreds of consultants, and seven years of planning - all down the drain.

The project, affectionately nicknamed 'eLWIS' (because who doesn't love an Elvis reference?), was supposed to revolutionize Lidl's inventory management. 

Instead, by July 2018, they had to crawl back to their old system, tail between their legs.

And Lidl isn't alone. Check out these other ERP horror stories that'll make your skin crawl.

Now, you might be thinking, "Great, another article telling me why ERPs are terrible and I should stick to my spreadsheets." 

So why do companies keep implementing ERPs?

Not because they're gluttons for punishment, but because when done right, an ERP can be the difference between scaling to eight figures and watching your business crumble under its own weight.

The question isn't whether you need an ERP. 

The question is: Are you ready for one? 

And more importantly, how do you avoid becoming another cautionary tale?

Let's figure this out together.

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What is an ERP System? (And Why Should You Care?)

Think of an ERP as your business's brain on steroids. Sounds intense? That's because it is.

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning system, but that's just corporate-speak for "the thing that keeps all your business data in one place and stops everything from falling apart."

Here's what it actually does: Imagine your accounting software had a baby with your inventory management system, and that baby grew up to also handle your:

• Shipping
• Customer data
• Orders
• Vendor relationships
• Bills
• Personnel management
• Customer service

And pretty much everything else that makes your business tick

Why Do Businesses Keep Taking the Plunge?

Look, here's the deal - as your business grows beyond seven figures, things start getting messy. Really messy. 

That simple spreadsheet system that worked perfectly when you were doing $50K a month? It suddenly starts sprouting leaks when you hit $500K. 

Your data volume explodes, moving parts multiply, and those "little manual workarounds" you've been using start to feel like ticking time bombs.

That's when most businesses start eyeing ERPs. They're looking for that magical solution that will bring order to their chaos.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: ERPs are like performing surgery on your business while it's still running. 

When it works, it's transformative. When it doesn't... well, you saw what happened to Lidl.

The 10 Signs Your Business Might Need an ERP

Before you start sweating about whether you need to make this leap, let's break down the real signs that your business might be ready for an ERP. 

And no, "because my competitor has one" isn't on the list.

1. Multi-Channel Sales Are Making Your Head Spin

Remember when life was simple? One manufacturer, one warehouse, one Shopify store. Those were the days.

But now? Your inventory is spread across multiple warehouses like a game of logistics chess. 

You've got one warehouse in Canada, another in the US, and don't even get me started on your Amazon inventory requirements. 

Your manufacturer is sending singles to one location for DTC orders while bulk packs go to another for wholesale. 

And somehow, you need to keep track of it all.

Here's what this mess typically looks like:

• Your manufacturer ships different pack sizes to different locations
• You're constantly moving inventory between warehouses
• You need to track stock levels across multiple countries
• You're juggling DTC and wholesale inventory requirements
• You've got inventory "in transit" that exists in spreadsheet limbo

Sure, you could keep track of all this in spreadsheets. People have climbed Mount Everest in shorts too, but that doesn't make it a good idea.

An ERP can track every single unit, whether it's sitting in your Canadian warehouse, being prepped for Amazon FBA, or floating somewhere in the Pacific on its way to your US distribution center. 

It's like having a GPS tracker on every single piece of inventory you own.

2. Your Internal Fulfillment Is a House of Cards

So you've decided to run your own warehouse. Brave soul. 

Maybe 3PLs were eating too much into your margins, or maybe you just like having control. 

Either way, you're now dealing with the beautiful chaos of pick, pack, and ship operations.

Without a robust system connecting all these moving parts, you're basically playing Operation with your customer orders. 

Here's the kind of stuff that keeps operations managers up at night:

• Customer wants to cancel their order? Cool. Except it's already been picked but not shipped. Now what?
• Got a "wrong item shipped" complaint? Good luck figuring out if the mistake happened during picking, packing, or if the customer is trying to pull a fast one.
• Your employee just marked an order as shipped because... well, they thought they did? Without proper tracking of pick activities and item scanning, you're basically running on trust and prayers.

An ERP acts like a strict parent here - it won't let anyone skip steps. 

No picking scan? No shipping label. No exceptions. 

When something goes wrong (and it will), you can trace every step of the process like a supply chain detective.

3. Wholesale is Making You Question Your Life Choices

Let's talk about wholesale - that magical land where orders are bigger, margins are tighter, and paperwork multiplies like rabbits.

Without a proper system, here's what your wholesale operation probably looks like:

• Sales orders floating around in emails
• Purchase orders living in a different system
• Shipping documents playing hide and seek
• Invoices that may or may not match what was actually shipped
• Payments that need to be reconciled manually (fun!)

Here's a classic nightmare scenario: A customer orders 100 units each of three different products. 

You only have two in stock, so you ship those. But your billing system doesn't know that, so it invoices for all three. 

Now you've got an angry customer, a finance team in confusion, and a headache that no amount of coffee can fix.

4. Your Inventory Numbers Are More Fiction Than Fact

If your physical inventory count regularly leaves you scratching your head and muttering "that can't be right," you're not alone.

The gap between what your system says you have and what's actually on your shelves is like a black hole where profits go to die. 

And the reasons? 

They multiply faster than your Instagram followers during a viral campaign:

• Wrong items being shipped (oops)
• Products breaking in the warehouse (double oops)
• The mysterious case of disappearing inventory (let's not talk about that)
• Returns that never made it back into stock (because who has time for that?)

Most brands only discover these lovely surprises when they try to sell something that their system says exists but... surprise! It doesn't.

An ERP tracks every item's journey like an overprotective parent - from the moment it arrives at your warehouse to its final destination. 

Plus, it makes cycle counting less of a quarterly nightmare and more of a regular, manageable process.

5. Your Inventory Costing Looks Like Abstract Art

If calculating your true inventory costs requires a PhD in mathematics and a crystal ball, we need to talk.

Here's what makes inventory costing a nightmare without proper systems:

• Raw materials costs floating around
• Packaging costs living in separate spreadsheets
• Shipping and customs costs that need to be capitalized
• Labor costs for manufacturing
• Machine time tracking
• Work-in-progress inventory that's... somewhere

And if you're doing your own manufacturing? Oh boy. 

Trying to track all the raw materials, labor costs, and machine time in spreadsheets is like trying to juggle while riding a unicycle - technically possible, but why would you do that to yourself?

An ERP handles all this complexity like it's nothing. 

Want to use average costing? Sure. 

Need to recalculate costs every time new inventory arrives? No problem. 

It's like having a really nerdy accountant who never sleeps and actually enjoys doing this stuff.

6. Your Product Catalog Is Getting Out of Hand

Product catalogs have a way of growing more complex over time. 

What starts as a manageable selection can quickly expand into a matrix of variations that challenges even the most organized systems.

Here's what catalog complexity often looks like in practice:

• Multiple SKUs across different product lines
• Size and color variations
• Seasonal collections
• Different colorways
• Expiry dates (for food/beverage products)
• Lot codes that need tracking
• Batch numbers for quality control

This complexity multiplies with volume. At a certain point, traditional inventory management methods start showing their limitations.

For food and beverage brands, proper tracking isn't just about organization - it's about safety and compliance. 

When you need to identify which lot went to which customer for potential recalls, you need a system that can provide that information instantly.

In apparel, the complexity might look like:

• Multiple style numbers
• Various color options
• Size ranges
• Seasonal collections
• Stock across multiple warehouses

Without an ERP, managing these variables through spreadsheets or basic inventory systems becomes increasingly risky and time-consuming.

7. Inventory Activities Are Becoming More Complex

Ask anyone who's tried managing complex inventory activities with basic systems - it's like trying to solve a Rubik's cube in the dark.

Take kitting and bundling operations. On paper, it seems straightforward:

• You have single items in stock
• You create bundles from these items
• You sell both singles and bundles

But in reality? It's a different story.

Here's what actually happens: A customer orders a variety pack. 

Your system shows you have enough inventory. Great! 

Except... some of that inventory is locked up in other bundles. Some is reserved for wholesale orders. And some exists as both singles and as parts of multi-packs. 

Suddenly, your "simple" bundling operation becomes a stock availability puzzle.

Without proper systems, you're left asking:

• How many complete bundles can you actually make?
• If you break down some multi-packs, how does that affect other orders?
• When you transfer stock between locations, how does that impact your bundling capacity?

An ERP cuts through this complexity. It sees your inventory in all its forms - singles, bundles, components, works in progress - and knows exactly what you can sell, bundle, or transfer at any given moment.

8. Your Corporate Structure Has Layers

Operating across multiple legal entities or countries adds several layers of complexity to inventory management. 

What works for a single entity starts breaking down when you're dealing with:

• Multiple legal entities under one umbrella
• Operations across different countries
• Internal stock transfers between subsidiaries
• Cross-border shipping and receiving
• Different tax jurisdictions

Most basic accounting systems treat each legal entity as its own island. That's fine when you're starting out, but it becomes problematic when you need to:

• View consolidated inventory levels across all entities
• Track stock movements between different legal entities
• Manage internal sales and transfers
• Handle currency conversions automatically
• Maintain proper transfer pricing documentation
• Generate consolidated reports for investors or management

And if you start selling between different legal entities or different countries, you can also keep track of how much of that is real profit to external customers versus just internal transfer pricing issues.

9. Your Reporting Needs Are Growing (And Your Coffee Budget Too)

If you're spending hours each week pulling together reports that should be automated, something's got to give.

Like maybe you have a report that you want to be able to see weekly that's very time-consuming to put together manually, like knowing the top five SKUs that were sold in each state. 

An ERP can automate that easily. Or there might be a report that you don't want regularly, but you want it as an alert when it's relevant, like knowing if the sale of any SKU drops more than 50% week over week. 

Normally, a person might have to manually check that every single week and only let you know if there's something that went wrong. 

However, an ERP can just constantly check and alert you if there's something relevant to alert you with.

10. Volume Is Breaking Your Current Systems

Sometimes it's not about complexity at all. Sometimes it's just pure volume.

Even if you don't have any of the specific complexities we've mentioned thus far, if your business is growing and you just have a very large volume of transactions, ERPs are just better at handling it. 

So, to decide when you might need to consider implementing an ERP, you really have to take into consideration all of these, both the complexity and the volume.

Critical Considerations Before Implementation

So you've checked off several boxes from the signs above. 

Before you dive headfirst into an ERP implementation, let's talk about what you need to have in place.

1. Your Team's Tech-Savviness

Here's the uncomfortable truth about team readiness:

If your current processes involve a lot of:

• Paper-based tracking
• Manual data entry
• "That's how we've always done it" mindsets
• Resistance to digital tools
• Heavy reliance on tribal knowledge

Then you might need to address these issues before even thinking about an ERP.

That might mean needing to upgrade your team if the old team can't adapt to the new way of doing things. 

Your team needs to be tech-savvy, open to learning and changing things, and they should be good problem solvers. 

A lot can go wrong during an implementation, so if your team isn't good at thinking on their feet and they only know to follow very strict processes, then they're going to have a tough time. 

On the other hand, let's say you get through the implementation, but your team's not very good at following the new processes or adapting to it, then you're going to have a lot of missing data in the system, which makes the whole thing kind of useless. 

Because here's the thing - ERPs don't fix processes. People do. An ERP is just a tool, and like any tool, it's only as good as the people using it.

2. Your Data Game Has to Be Strong

Having an ERP is like having a Ferrari. Sounds great, but do you know how to drive it?

Ask yourself:

• Can your team effectively analyze data?
• Do you make decisions based on metrics?
• Is your current data clean and organized?
• Do you have data governance procedures?
• Are you actually using the data you already have?

An ERP will give you a tsunami of new data. 

But if you're not already making good use of your existing data, more information isn't going to solve your problems - it's just going to create new ones.

3. Implementation Capacity: The Hidden Cost

Here's what no one tells you about ERP implementation - it's like running a second business while trying to keep your current one alive.

You'll need capacity for:

• Running your current systems
• Implementing the new ERP
• Training the entire team
• Running both systems in parallel
• Troubleshooting inevitable issues

The reality is, you need significant extra bandwidth. 

This often means bringing in additional help - project managers, subject matter experts, and external consultants to fill knowledge gaps. 

Your core team needs enough breathing room to handle both their regular duties and the implementation work.

4. Finding the Right Partner

Here's where things often go sideways. You've got ERP vendors who know their software inside and out but don't understand your business. 

Then there's your team, who knows your business perfectly but has never touched an ERP. 

It's a classic case of two experts speaking different languages.

I've seen this issue myself when I've stepped in to help a company complete an implementation that had stalled. 

The typical scenario plays out like this: The vendor suggests "best practices" that look great on paper but don't fit your actual operations. 

Meanwhile, your team wants the ERP to exactly match your current processes - which defeats the purpose of getting a new system in the first place.

What you really need is someone who can bridge this gap. 

Someone who understands both the technical capabilities of the software and the practical realities of your business. 

They need to be able to challenge assumptions on both sides and navigate the politics of change management. 

Most importantly, they need to be able to make tough calls when needed.

5. Choosing Between Options: The Paradox of Choice

When it comes to ERPs, you'll find yourself drowning in options. Every vendor will tell you their solution is perfect for your business. 

They'll all claim to handle your specific industry needs, promise seamless integration with your existing tools, and guarantee scalability for your future growth.

The truth is more complicated. 

Each ERP has its own strengths and quirks. 

Some excel at manufacturing but struggle with ecommerce. Others handle multi-channel retail beautifully but fall short on the financial side. 

And then there's the question of size - do you need an enterprise-level solution, or would a mid-market ERP serve you better?

Your choice needs to account for your current size, industry specifics, growth trajectory, and how it will play with your existing tech stack. 

The wrong choice here can lock you into a system that fights against your business instead of supporting it.

6. The Money Talk

Let's talk numbers. An ERP implementation isn't just expensive - it's expensive in ways you might not expect.

The obvious costs include software licenses, implementation consultants, and training. 

But the hidden costs often hit harder: the time your team spends away from their regular duties, the temporary drop in efficiency as people learn the new system, the customizations you didn't know you needed.

For smaller businesses, you're looking at a six-figure investment just to get started. 

And that's before the ongoing costs - monthly software fees that can easily run into five figures, maintenance, support, and regular updates.

The question isn't just whether you can afford it - it's whether you can afford not to do it. 

If you're losing money to inefficiencies, errors, and manual processes, a well-implemented ERP might pay for itself. But if you're not ready, rushing into it could be a costly mistake.

The Bottom Line: Is an eCommerce ERP Right for You?

Let's circle back to where we started - that €500 million Lidl cautionary tale. The moral isn't that ERPs are bad. It's that timing and preparation are everything.

A successful ERP implementation can transform your business. 

It can give you the foundation to scale beyond eight figures, reduce costly errors, and make better-informed decisions. 

But it's not just about buying software - it's about evolving your entire business.

Think of an ERP like a heart transplant for your business. Yes, you might desperately need one. 

But if you're not healthy enough for the surgery, rushing into it could kill you. You need the right team, the right processes, and the right partner to make it work.

Here's what it comes down to: If you're seeing multiple signs from our list, and you've got the foundations we discussed in place - solid team, data competence, implementation capacity, and budget - then it might be time to take the leap.

But if you're missing any of those foundational elements? Focus on building those first. 

An ERP won't fix broken processes or an unprepared team. It'll just make your problems more expensive.

Remember: The goal isn't to implement an ERP. 

The goal is to build a business that can scale efficiently. Sometimes an ERP is the answer. Sometimes it's not. The trick is knowing the difference.

If you need any help with an implementation or just deciding whether it makes sense for you to implement one, feel free to reach out. 

We've worked on plenty of implementations, so we can give you an honest answer of whether or not it's worth the effort.

If you're not quite ready for an ERP - or even if you are - there's still plenty you can do to scale your business effectively.

Want to see what actually moves the needle in ecommerce? Check out our video on how to scale your ecommerce business the boring way: the unglamorous work that actually brings results.

No fancy tech stacks or complex solutions - just proven processes that work.