Every successful CPG brand reaches an inflection point. What started as a scrappy operation running on spreadsheets and grit suddenly transforms into a multi-channel business managing hundreds of SKUs, multiple warehouses, and orders streaming in from DTC, wholesale, and retail partners. It's an incredible problem to have... until your systems can't keep up.
The bottom line: Traditional ERP systems force growing consumer goods brands into rigid workflows that can't adapt to modern CPG operations, costing companies time, money, and growth opportunities.
For most consumer goods brands, that first ERP seemed like the answer. Finally, a real system to manage inventory, track orders, and handle accounting. But as growth accelerates, something shifts. What once felt like a solution starts feeling like a constraint. The very system designed to enable scale becomes the bottleneck preventing it.
If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Let's explore why CPG operations inevitably outgrow traditional ERPs, and what modern CPG supply chain leaders are doing about it.
The Growth Trajectory Every CPG Brand Knows
In the early days, a small business can get by with relatively simple approaches. A founder and a small team can track everything in their heads or across a handful of spreadsheets. Manual workflows and basic tools get you surprisingly far.
But as demand increases, complexity multiplies exponentially. You need more co-manufacturers, more 3PLs, more retail partners, and more distribution channels. You expand your product line. You launch in new regions. Suddenly, that simple operation isn't so simple anymore.
Take Kahawa 1893, the specialty coffee brand founded by Margaret Nyamumbo. When we met their team in late 2023, they were experiencing explosive growth—every month was setting new records. Across a mountain of spreadsheets, their VP of Operations Corey Stary and team had constructed functional systems for inventory management, procurement, freight quotes, and invoicing.
But they were growing too fast. As Corey put it: "As we scaled our business and took on more customers, we faced unprecedented complexity—more SKUs, more manufacturing partners, more logistical considerations. We faced pressure to fill increasingly large orders more quickly than we ever had."
Processing a single order took about 10 minutes of manual work. With order volumes climbing, that simply wasn't sustainable. One data entry error could ripple through their entire fulfillment process.
This scenario plays out across consumer goods operations everywhere—the tools that enable initial growth eventually constrain it.
Why Traditional ERPs Fail Growing CPG Brands
Here's the uncomfortable truth: most ERPs weren't built for the way modern consumer goods operations actually work.
They Force-Fit Your Business Into Their Mold
Legacy ERPs operate on a fundamental assumption: there's one "right" way to run operations, and your business needs to conform to it. They come with rigid templates, predefined workflows, and extensive configuration requirements that take months (or years) to implement.
But CPG brands don't operate in standardized ways. A coffee company's procurement process looks nothing like a beauty brand's production planning. Even within the same industry, operational nuances matter enormously. One brand might call something a "Stock Order" while another calls it a "Work Order," but they're fundamentally talking about the same thing.
Traditional ERPs don't adapt to these nuances. They force you to adapt to them.
Implementation Takes Forever, Changes Take Even Longer
When you're growing fast, speed matters. But traditional ERP implementations are measured in quarters or years, not weeks. First comes the discovery phase. Then the extensive customization. Then testing. Then training. Then the inevitable issues that emerge post-launch.
And once you're finally live? Making changes requires submitting tickets, waiting on external consultants, and paying for expensive customization projects. Want to add a new field to track a specific data point your team needs? That's a month-long project.
In consumer goods operations, where market conditions shift rapidly and new opportunities emerge constantly, this rigidity is deadly. By the time your ERP is configured to handle your current needs, your business has already evolved past them.
They Create Data Silos Instead of Solving Them
One of the main reasons brands adopt ERPs is to create a single source of truth. But here's what actually happens: you end up with your ERP, plus Shopify for DTC , plus EDI portals for retail, plus QuickBooks for accounting, plus spreadsheets to fill in the gaps where the ERP falls short.
Instead of unifying your data, you've just added another system to the mix. Your team spends hours copy-pasting information between platforms, manually reconciling inventory counts, and trying to piece together what's actually happening across your supply chain.
This fragmentation doesn't just waste time—it introduces errors. When the same information lives in multiple places with no automated sync, discrepancies are inevitable. And in CPG supply chain management, those discrepancies translate directly to stockouts, overstock, missed shipments, and unhappy retail partners.
The Cost Structure Doesn't Scale With You
Traditional ERPs come with substantial upfront costs, lengthy contracts, and fees that increase as you add users or modules. There are implementation costs, annual support fees, and additional charges for every change request.
For a growing CPG brand, this creates a painful paradox: you're paying more and more for a system that's serving you less and less effectively. The costs scale up, but the value doesn't.
Real-World Impact: What Happens When Your ERP Can't Keep Up
Let's make this concrete with another example. Mezcla, the plant-based protein bar brand that's doubled revenue year-over-year and landed in Whole Foods, Kroger, and Sprouts, hit this wall hard.
Orders were streaming in from multiple channels—DTC, wholesale, retail—but their system of Airtable, Owlery, and spreadsheets couldn't keep pace. Every order required tedious manual data entry, copying information from emails and EDI systems into Airtable and QuickBooks. If a single decimal point was wrong in either platform, it could trigger costly errors downstream.
The impacts were tangible:
- Operations team members spending 12+ hours per week on manual data entry
- PO processing that should have taken minutes stretched to hours
- Risk of fulfillment errors that could damage relationships with key retail partners
- Limited visibility into actual inventory levels across locations
- Inability to quickly generate accurate invoices
This is the reality for most CPG brands running on systems that can't scale. Operations teams become overloaded and under-resourced, constantly fighting fires instead of driving strategic growth. They're too busy manually processing orders to optimize their CPG supply chain or explore new distribution opportunities.
What Modern CPG Operations Actually Need
So what's the alternative? Growing consumer goods brands need systems that:
Adapt to how you actually work: Your CPG operations shouldn't have to conform to rigid templates. The system should flex to match your specific workflows, terminology, and processes—whether that's tracking samples for buyer meetings, managing co-manufacturer relationships, or handling unique pricing structures for different retail channels.
Deploy in weeks, not quarters: When opportunities emerge, you need to move fast. Implementation should be measured in weeks, with your team able to see and test workflows in real-time as they're being built.
Change on the fly: Need to add a new data field? Want to automate a repetitive workflow? These should be changes you can make yourself in minutes, not months-long projects requiring external consultants.
Unify your data without ripping out existing tools: You shouldn't have to abandon Shopify, QuickBooks, or your EDI connections. The right system integrates with tools you're already using, pulling data together into a true single source of truth.
Scale without adding headcount: As order volumes increase and complexity grows, your system should help you handle more with your existing team—not force you to hire more people just to keep up with manual processes.
The DOSS Operations Cloud Approach
This is exactly why we built DOSS differently from the ground up.
DOSS Operations Cloud takes a fundamentally different approach to consumer goods operations. Instead of forcing your business into predetermined templates, we build systems that adapt to your reality.
Modular, Composable Architecture
At the core is DOSS ARP (Adaptive Resource Platform)—a modular system that lets you build exactly what you need. Every module is composed of three no-code building blocks: tables, forms, and workflows.
Need to track inventory across multiple 3PL warehouses? Build it. Want to automate PO generation when stock hits specific thresholds? Configure it. Need custom pricing logic for different retail partners? Create it.
About 80% of what every business needs is the same high-level structure. The final 20% is where your specific operational nuances emerge. DOSS handles both seamlessly.
Integrated Data Foundation
DOSS IDP (Integrated Data Platform) serves as your foundational data layer. It connects to 100+ integrations - from Shopify and Amazon to QuickBooks and EDI portals - pulling everything into a unified master data model.
This isn't just another dashboard displaying disconnected data. It's a true unified system where changes flow automatically between your commerce platforms, 3PLs, accounting software, and DOSS itself.
Real-Time Intelligence Built In
DOSS DataStudio provides embedded analytics directly within the platform. No need for separate BI tools or complex integrations. Real-time insights into margins, inventory turns, OTIF performance, and demand patterns are built right into your daily workflows.
When Corey Stary at Kahawa says "I love seeing the overall state of our business in a single location. Doss is our source of truth for just about everything," this is what he's referring to—operational data and business intelligence unified in one place.
Results That Matter: Real CPG Brands, Real Impact
The proof is in the outcomes. Here's what happens when CPG brands switch from traditional approaches to adaptive operations:
Before vs. After: Real Customer Transformations
Kahawa 1893 reduced order management processing time from 10 minutes to 20 seconds—that's 30x faster. They maintained 100% order fulfillment accuracy even as volumes and complexity skyrocketed. As their VP of Operations put it: "I no longer sweat when I get a big Purchase Order!"
- Before: 10 minutes per order, manual spreadsheet management, growing order volumes creating bottlenecks
- After: 20-second order processing, automated workflows, 100% accuracy at scale
Mezcla saved over 12 hours per week and doubled their PO processing speed by unifying orders, freight, and finance into DOSS. Their senior operations associate Justin Grender explains the mindset shift: "Less manual work equals more time spent on strategic initiatives. Don't cater towards an ERP's requirements—look for something that's customizable as a solution and able to adapt and scale versus something that keeps you restrained."
- Before: 12+ hours weekly on manual data entry, slow PO processing, risk of fulfillment errors
- After: Automated order-to-cash, 2x faster PO processing, time freed for strategic work
Eight Sleep faced visibility challenges as they tripled revenue in a single year—their NetSuite instance couldn't model the complexity. Within just six weeks, DOSS mapped their entire master data model, automated SKU creation, and delivered real-time margin visibility. The result? They could scale operations without adding headcount while maintaining the visibility needed to make strategic decisions.
- Before: NetSuite couldn't handle complexity, poor visibility into operations, manual SKU management
- After: 6-week deployment, real-time margin visibility, automated SKU creation, scaling without headcount increase
These aren't incremental improvements. They're transformational changes that free up operations teams to focus on growth instead of grunt work.
Making the Transition: What to Expect
If you're reading this and recognizing your own situation, you might be wondering what a transition actually looks like.
With DOSS, implementation is measured in weeks, not months. Here's the typical process:
- Discovery and mapping: Our team meets with yours to understand your specific workflows, pain points, and requirements.
- Live configuration: We configure your DOSS instance together in real-time. Within minutes, you'll see your workflows taking shape and can provide immediate feedback.
- Data migration: We bring in your existing data from spreadsheets, your current systems, Shopify, QuickBooks—wherever it lives today.
- Refinement and launch: We iterate based on your feedback until you're completely satisfied, then you're live.
The whole process typically takes weeks, not quarters. And once you're live, you're not locked into static configurations. Changes happen in minutes, not months.
The Bottom Line for CPG Operations Leaders
Here's what it comes down to: your operations system should enable growth, not constrain it. When you're spending more time working around your ERP than working with it, something's broken.
The brands winning in consumer goods operations today aren't the ones with the most traditional ERP implementations. They're the ones that have embraced adaptive, flexible systems that grow with them.
As you evaluate your current systems and plan for scale, ask yourself:
- How long would it take to make a critical change to our workflows today?
- How much time is our team spending on manual data entry and reconciliation?
- Can we confidently see our entire operation in real-time?
- Are we scaling our people as fast as our revenue, just to keep up with operational tasks?
- Is our current system helping us seize new opportunities, or holding us back?
If those questions make you uncomfortable, it might be time to consider a different approach.
The future of CPG operations isn't about conforming to rigid systems. It's about having systems that adapt to your business, deploy fast, change easily, and actually scale.
That's what modern consumer goods operations looks like. And that's what's possible when your operations cloud is built for the real world.
Ready to see how DOSS can transform your CPG operations? Book a demo with our team to explore how our adaptive platform can help you scale without adding headcount, reduce manual work, and get real-time visibility across your entire supply chain.
