Spreadsheets are flexible, familiar and inexpensive. They are often exactly what a young business needs.
As operations grow, multiple versions, manual updates, weak permissions and disconnected workflows can make it difficult to know which record is authoritative.
The signal is operational complexity: more people, more locations, more transactions, more approvals and more need for traceability. Digital transformation should begin with those workflows, then determine which system is appropriate.
Good operations make the business easier to understand, not harder.
What to do next
Map the workflow, identify where information or control breaks down, define ownership and only then decide whether the answer is a process change, a control, a system or some combination of the three.