Over the past year we've sat down with directors of small and mid-sized producers across Ireland and the UK, and one thing comes up in almost every conversation: the majority don't run an ERP. No SAP, no NetSuite, no Microsoft Dynamics. When you ask why, the answers are remarkably consistent — those systems are expensive to implement, expensive to train people on, and even if you had the budget, it's genuinely hard to know what to choose.

Here's the thing: that's not a failing. The person who makes the product usually knows it better than any database ever will. The data isn't missing — it's just in the wrong place: in someone's head, in a drawer, or scattered across nine spreadsheets. This post is about moving it somewhere more useful, one realistic step at a time. Find the scenario that sounds like you, and take one step up. That's all.

Scenario 1: Everything lives in your head — or a notebook

You're the director, and quite possibly the maker too. The recipes, the material mixes, the supplier arrangements — they're in your memory, backed up by handwritten notes and a paper diary. It works, because you're always there.

The step up here is not an IT project. It's one afternoon and a spreadsheet — Microsoft Excel if you have it, or Google Sheets, which is free with any Google account and works in the browser. Make a sheet with one row per product and these columns:

  • Product name (and your internal code, if you use one)
  • What it's made of — materials with rough percentages
  • Weight
  • Main supplier for each key material
  • Where it's made
  • Certifications you hold, if any
  • Care / repair / disposal notes

A few habits while you type will pay off for years: keep one fact per column, always write the units ("380 g", not "380"), never merge cells, and if you're not sure of a number, write your best guess and put a question mark after it — a marked guess is far more useful than a blank. While you're at it, photograph the paper records with your phone and drop them into one folder.

The bar to clear: someone who isn't you could open the sheet and answer "what's in this product?"

That's it. That single sheet already puts you ahead of most of the market — and it's the seed everything later grows from.

Scenario 2: You have spreadsheets. Too many of them.

The order file, the stock file, the costing file, and three versions of products_final_v2.xlsx — each with slightly different columns, and none of them complete. You don't need new software here either. You need one master sheet, and the tedious part of building it — merging, deduplicating, tidying — is exactly what AI assistants are now genuinely good at.

If you haven't used them: ChatGPT (from OpenAI, at chatgpt.com), Claude (from Anthropic, at claude.ai), Microsoft Copilot (built into newer versions of Excel), and Google Gemini (built into Google Sheets) all look like a simple chat window. You upload a file or paste in your data, type what you want in plain English, and get the result back. No formulas, no training course. The free versions are enough to start; the paid ones are around €20 a month.

Ask them things like this, word for word:

  • "Here are two spreadsheets that describe the same products. Merge them into one list with one row per product and these columns: name, materials, weight, supplier, country of origin."
  • "Find products that appear more than once under slightly different names."
  • "Convert all weights to grams and list every row that's missing composition information."
  • "Design a clean product-data template for a small furniture maker."

Two honest cautions. First, check the output — spot-check a handful of rows against the originals, because these tools are occasionally wrong with great confidence. Second, be sensible about secrets: if a recipe or supplier price list is commercially sensitive, use a paid business version and check its data settings before uploading, rather than pasting it into a free tool without a second thought.

The destination is the same as scenario 1 — one master sheet that's the single source of truth — you're just arriving from the other direction.

Scenario 3: You've outgrown the basics

Maybe you already run simple stock or warehouse software, or the master spreadsheet now has four people editing it at once. The signs you've outgrown this level are predictable: stock in more than one location, the same data retyped into invoices and labels and the web shop, and nobody quite trusting the numbers.

The instinct is to reach for the big names — and to be clear, SAP, NetSuite and Dynamics are excellent systems. But they're built for companies with an IT department and a six-figure implementation budget, which is exactly why most producers we meet never adopted them. For an SME, what matters more than the badge is the shape of the product. Look for software that is:

  • Cloud-based, with simple per-month pricing and a free trial
  • Able to import your spreadsheet on day one
  • Able to export everything just as easily — no lock-in
  • Connected: integrations or an API, so other tools can read your data

Concretely, three families worth a look: inventory and manufacturing tools built for makers (Katana, Unleashed, inFlow); modular business suites that let you start with one piece and grow (Odoo — open source, or Zoho Inventory); and if you already do your accounts in Xero or QuickBooks, their stock modules are often the gentlest possible step up, because your products and invoices finally live in one place.

Whatever you pick, pilot it with one product line for a month, importing the master sheet you already built. If the tool exports freely, you're not marrying it — you're just trying it on.

Why do this now?

Everything above is worth doing on its own merits — quoting gets faster, mistakes get rarer, and the business stops depending on one person's memory. But there's a deadline quietly attached: the EU's Digital Product Passport will require exactly this information — composition, origin, certifications, end-of-life — category by category between now and 2030. The producers who level up their data now will find that compliance is a formality. The ones who don't will be doing scenario 1 in a hurry, with a regulator waiting.

And wherever you are on this ladder, you don't have to reach the top rung before the passport becomes possible. Luxima was built to meet you at any of these levels: a stack of photographed notes, a single master sheet with gaps in it, or a live connection to your stock system. The AI fills what's missing — that's the whole point.