The ERP Is In. So Why Is Everyone Still On Spreadsheets?

Most conversations about e-commerce focus on the front end — the ads, the campaigns, the customer acquisition. Behind the Stack is something different. It's a podcast series we've launched with the team at Fulfill ERP, built around the idea that the most interesting — and most consequential — stuff in a scaling brand happens behind the scenes. The operational stuff. The boring stuff, as some might call it. We think it's the exciting stuff.

In episode one, Oliver Rhodes sits down with Fulfil co-founder ST to get into the real challenges facing e-commerce operators. From SKU setup and colour codes to revenue recognition errors and ERP implementations that quietly fail, the conversation goes to places most podcasts won't. One concept that comes up early and stays with you: ERP theater — where a brand has technically implemented an ERP, but if you actually want to know what's going on, you wouldn't look in it. The real data is still passing hands in Google Sheets, buried in email threads, or getting "passed around the back" between colleagues. It's a problem more common than most brands would admit, and it points to something deeper: technology alone doesn't fix operations. Change has to come from the top down, with genuine buy-in across the business.

The conversation gets into the detail on product data — specifically why getting your master data right at the source matters more than any PIM or ERP implementation further down the line. If design, merchandising, and e-commerce aren't aligned on something as fundamental as how a SKU gets named or a colour code assigned, those inconsistencies ripple through every system the brand touches, from purchase orders to warehouse labels to Shopify listings. It's the kind of foundational problem that doesn't show up until it's expensive to fix.

What ties the whole conversation together is a shared philosophy: that the brands which scale well aren't the ones with the most technology — they're the ones who made deliberate decisions about what they actually needed, got the right people in the room, and built systems that their teams would genuinely use. That's the spirit behind both Nolo and Fulfill, and it's what Behind the Stack is here to explore over the next nine episodes.

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