For decades, Excel has been a phenomenal tool.
Built in the 1980s for row-and-column arithmetic, it quietly became an operating system of modern business, powering financial models, budgets, forecasts, and supply chains.
And honestly, for early-stage brands, using Excel for inventory planning makes perfect sense.
In the beginning, the problem is manageable. One sales channel. A reasonable number of SKUs. A single warehouse. A structured spreadsheet maintained by a part-time planner is enough to forecast demand and keep operations running smoothly.
Then the brand grows.
New channels get added. DTC, marketplaces, wholesale. SKUs multiply across sizes and colors. Warehouses and 3PLs enter the mix. That single spreadsheet slowly turns into multiple files, manual workarounds, workbooks filled with macros & hidden formulas, that only a few people really understand.
At some point, the spreadsheet stops being a tool and becomes a system, one held together by institutional knowledge. A few key people become indispensable because they’re the only ones who truly understand how everything connects.
The issue isn’t that Excel failed.
It’s that the problem changed.
Modern inventory planning is no longer just arithmetic. It’s pattern recognition across thousands of
SKUs, multiple channels, and constantly shifting demand signals. It requires probabilistic forecasting and real-time optimization as new data flows in.
Today’s planning challenges require systems that adapt. As operations become more complex, brands are moving from manual planning toward integrated, intelligent platforms to make faster, more confident decisions like what we’re building at OnePint.ai.
Excel got brands through the first phase of growth.
The next phase needs something built for how retail actually works today.