If your team is spending more time fixing problems than driving growth, you don’t have a people issue; you have a system issue. In 2025, the brands pulling ahead aren’t the ones working longer hours. They’re the ones working smarter, building internal systems that scale, automate, and remove friction at every level.
Yet most eCommerce teams still rely on manual workflows, duplicated data, and reactive fixes. The result? Burnout, missed opportunities, and a feeling that the business is growing faster than the team can keep up.
In a recent eCommerce Explored session, Chloe Thomas hosted three experts at the heart of operations and team performance, where they unpacked how leading brands reshape their internal systems for efficiency without sacrificing speed or sanity.
Meet the Experts
- Sam Sesti – Co-founder of Report Toaster and long-time Shopify merchant with deep insight into where teams waste time.
- Oliver Rhodes – Co-founder of Nolo Apps, formerly of Peoplevox. Obsessed with simplifying workflows and scaling lean.
- Angélica Sanz Ull – Head of Product Marketing at Doofinder, based in Madrid. Connects customer behaviour to team efficiency.
Stop Working Around the Problem, Start Fixing the System
Most eCommerce teams aren’t inefficient because they’re lazy. It's because they’ve normalised bad systems. For Sam, the issue is clear: too much time is spent on the business and not on it. He described merchants who manually build the same reports every week, spending hours exporting, formatting, and emailing data. It’s routine, but it’s also a red flag.
Instead of layering more tools on top of broken processes, he encourages brands to look closely at their routines. If a task feels like a chore, it probably doesn’t belong in your weekly workflow. Fixing even one of these time-draining patterns can free up headspace for strategic thinking and unlock capacity you didn’t realise your team had.
Don’t Automate a Mess, Map It First
Before discussing automation or process upgrades, Oliver recommends something deceptively simple: draw it out. Most teams don’t know how their workflows function daily—mapping a process on Post-it notes or a whiteboard forces you to confront inefficiencies, duplicate steps, and data handoffs that slow everything down.
He shared the example of a retailer who cut product onboarding from eight days to 48 hours, not by investing in complex systems but by reducing unnecessary back-and-forth between departments. It’s a pattern he’s seen repeatedly: visibility leads to simplification, and simplification unlocks efficiency. If you can’t explain your process in ten sticky notes, it’s too complex.
Use Customer Signals to Shape Internal Decisions
While most operational inefficiencies live in the back end, Angélica reminded us that some of the best efficiency insights come from customer-facing data, especially search. She pointed out that roughly half of all eCommerce sales hinge on what happens in the search bar. If your team isn’t paying attention to how customers search and, more importantly, what they can’t find, you’re missing vital operational cues.
It’s not just about optimising the website experience. Search data reveals trends, gaps in inventory, and content issues your team can address before they balloon into bigger problems. A rise in specific search terms could inform which SKUs get priority restocks or which products need clearer titles. Listening to your customers in real time lets your ops team move with intention, not guesswork.
Culture Beats Tools Every Time
Efficiency isn’t a tool problem. It’s a people problem. Or, more accurately, a mindset problem. As Oliver put it, team efficiency is one of the most underused levers in eCommerce today. The most successful brands he’s seen aren’t just moving fast; they’re doing so with small, tightly aligned teams.
He cited a jewellery brand turning over tens of millions with just 25 people. Their secret? They evaluate every new initiative, from launching SKUs to choosing platforms, through the lens of operational cost. That kind of thinking isn’t restrictive; it’s liberating. When teams know how their choices affect resourcing, decision-making sharpens, and work stops piling up for the sake of progress.
Documentation: The Quiet Engine of Growth
One of the most quietly powerful ideas in the conversation came from Angélica, who stressed the importance of documenting what your team does and why each step exists in the first place. When new hires join, or roles shift, undocumented processes become friction points. And those gaps compound as you grow.
She advised spending time upfront to interrogate your current working methods and then write them down. This isn’t about building manuals no one reads. It’s about building shared knowledge so that your team can evolve together. Let the team co-create SOPs, test them, and adjust them. That’s how documentation becomes dynamic, not dusty.
Your Time Has Value. Treat It That Way.
One of the clearest points of the session came when Sam did the math: if your time is worth $50 an hour, saving just seven minutes justifies an investment. And yet, far too many teams cling to inefficient processes out of habit or fear of change.
He argued that efficiency isn’t a cost; it’s a return. But you only unlock it when you stop treating your team’s time as expendable. Whether cleaning up reporting workflows or reducing duplicate data entry, every minute can save you time to reallocate to the work that grows your brand.
The Hidden Cost of Inaction
Midway through the conversation, Chloe referenced a striking stat: the average retailer wastes over 300 hours a year on manual workflows that automation can solve. That’s nearly two full work months. Imagine what your team could build, fix, or grow with that time back. It’s a sobering reminder that inaction is a choice with a real cost.
Wrapping up
Efficiency doesn’t start with tools. It starts with perspective. It begins when teams stop managing their problems and instead decide to fix them at the source. “If your SOP has 25 steps,” Oliver said, “your real problem isn’t the team, it’s the system.”
Map your workflows. Document your decisions. Look at your customer data like it speaks directly to your ops team because it does.
Want to see the full conversation and hear more from Sam, Angélica, and Oliver? Watch the webinar on YouTube or sign up to get early access to future eCommerce Explored sessions.
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