The 10-hour week is a tooling problem, not an ERP problem
If your ops lead spends 10 hours a week pulling reports and updating spreadsheets, the fix usually isn't a new ERP. It's the layer between the systems you already own.
If your ops lead spends 10 hours a week on routine inventory or order-routing busywork, the fix is almost never a new ERP. It's the routing, normalization, and write-back layer between the tools you already own. Most CPG operations could cut that 10-hour ritual to under an hour without changing a single system of record.
Why a new ERP rarely helps
ERPs are systems of record. They store data well. They're not, and were never designed to be, workflow engines. When the ops lead spends most of Tuesday in Excel triaging 3PL inventory levels against Walmart sell-through, the bottleneck is the spreadsheet-to-system handoff — not the system itself.
A migration takes 12–18 months and rarely fixes the workflow on its own. It just gives you a newer system with the same spreadsheet-in-the-middle problem.
What actually moves the metric
Three changes, in order of impact:
- Normalize the inputs. Stop letting reality arrive as a daily PDF and a spreadsheet export. AI automation pulls 3PL inventory, retailer sell-through, and order velocity into one structured store every morning.
- Replace human integration with deterministic rules. The rules already exist (replenishment thresholds, kit assignment, deduction categorization) — they just live in the ops lead's head. Make them executable.
- Surface only exceptions. The ops lead reviews the SKUs and orders that actually need a decision, not the full daily catalog.
These three changes alone will take a 10-hour ritual to under an hour. Most CPG operations stop there because the marginal value of further compression is small.
When automation isn't the answer
Some 10-hour weekly rituals exist because the work is genuinely hard: a co-packer renegotiation, a new retailer onboarding, a category-level merchandising decision. Those aren't slow because of tooling — they're slow because the judgment is slow. Don't automate the judgment. Automate everything around it so that work gets the operator's full attention.
Bottom line
Look at where your ops lead actually spends Tuesday morning. If it's mostly pulling reports and forwarding spreadsheets, the 10-hour week is a tooling problem. Fix the tooling first, before anyone proposes a new system.