From Spreadsheets to Seamless: How B2B Distributors Can Automate Manual Workflows

Spreadsheets have long been the backbone of B2B distribution operations. But as businesses grow and complexity increases, what once worked can quickly become a bottleneck. Here’s how B2B distributors can move from manual, spreadsheet-driven processes to seamless, automated workflows, and unlock new levels of efficiency.

The Spreadsheet Trap in B2B Distribution

Many companies start with spreadsheets for inventory, order tracking, and product data. But as product catalogs expand and customer demands grow, spreadsheets can lead to data silos, version control headaches, and slow decision-making.

The Risks and Limitations of Manual Workflows

Manual workflows increase the risk of errors, duplicated effort, and missed opportunities. Delays in updating product data or processing orders can frustrate customers and limit your ability to scale.

Key Areas Ripe for Automation

Focus on automating high-impact areas such as product information management, order processing, and inventory updates. Automation in these areas reduces manual input, speeds up response times, and improves data accuracy. Our PIM can handle importing your products from any data source, keep inventory updated across channels and keep data consistant.

Choosing the Right Tools for Automation

Select solutions that integrate with your existing platforms (like Adobe Commerce or Magento) and can scale with your business. Look for features like automated data imports, real-time updates, and customizable workflows.

Overcoming Common Barriers

Common concerns include cost, disruption, and change management. Start with a pilot project to demonstrate value, and involve your team early to ensure buy-in and smooth adoption. We always recommend phasing the automations to measure the impact of each process and make sure they work as needed before moving onto the next. If you rush into all of them, you can end up with many issues and back in fire fighting mode.

Transforming a Manual Process

One distributor we worked with had several spreadsheets to update stock and price across multiple suppliers. We helped them automate their product data updates using a PIM system. What once took hours of manual editing across multiple spreadsheets now happens automatically, with fewer errors and faster turnaround. They now only need to deal with a few issues that may occur rather than the whole process.

The Path to Seamless Operations

Moving from spreadsheets to automated workflows isn’t just about saving time, it’s about creating a foundation for sustainable growth. Assess your current processes, identify where automation can have the biggest impact, and take the first step toward seamless B2B operations. We have partners that can help connect any system to any sytem with transforms, conditional processes, retries, etc. If you would like to find out more, get in touch with us.