Executive Summary

An estimated 20 million shops and small businesses worldwide still run sales, inventory, and customer lists in Excel or Google Sheets, which creates routine errors, time-consuming manual reconciliation, and poor visibility into pipeline and margins. These users are typically owner-operators and local managers who lack the time or technical appetite to rip-and-replace spreadsheets but desperately need repeatable sales processes, reliable reporting, and basic automation. You could build a spreadsheet-first custom CRM that automates the migration and ongoing sync of Excel workflows using NLP and table-parsing models to map columns, infer relationships, and generate domain-specific templates for retail, services, and light manufacturing. The product would combine a low-code rule engine to automate follow-ups and inventory triggers, native connectors to POS and payments, and optional implementation services that let you target a $2,000 average contract value toward a $40.0B addressable market; the opportunity scores 92/100 for market and 86/100 for revenue potential given current SMB digitization trends. This idea can stand out by making migration frictionless (preserving formulas and logic where possible), offering vertical starter packs, and monetizing through modular add-ons and integration bundles while keeping onboarding light for non-technical users. Real challenges are medium competition from incumbents and niche vendors, the high cost of reliable connector and migration engineering, and the need to prove ROI quickly for cash-strapped SMBs; if you can deliver demonstrable time savings and error reduction in the first 30–90 days, the unit economics and adoption hurdles can be overcome.

Market Opportunity

Stop using Excel: custom CRM to automate shops & small businesses targets a $40.0B = 20M SMBs x $2,000 ACV (global SMB CRM opportunity for paid, value-added solutions) total addressable market with medium saturation and a year-over-year growth rate of 12% (CRM & SMB automation growth driven by cloud migration).

Key trends driving demand: SMB digitization -- more small businesses moving from spreadsheets to cloud tools for operations and sales.; AI-enabled automation -- NLP and table-parsing models make rapid conversion of Excel workflows feasible.; Composability & connectors -- standardized APIs for POS/payments enable faster integrations for vertical CRMs..

Key competitors include Zoho CRM, HubSpot CRM, Salesforce (Essentials / Small Business), Airtable, Square (Block) POS & Customer Directory.

Sign in to access

Stop using Excel: custom CRM to automate shops & small businesses

Executive Summary

Market Validation

Market Opportunity

More in Sales Tech

Replace multiple business apps with one AI-driven CRM + automation platform

Missed enquiries cost trades — automate lead-to-booking & paid invoices

Solo sellers losing deals from missed follow-ups — lightweight pipeline + reminders

Stop missed WhatsApp leads — AI auto-replies + unified lead CRM (inbox→pipeline)

Managing leads, estimates and payments for window-cleaning SMBs

Stop manual follow-ups and unify customer data with AI-driven automation