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When is an ERP worth it? The Eurostat data and how to apply it to your company

According to Eurostat, in 2025 46.45% of EU companies with at least 10 persons employed used an ERP: 41.08% of small companies and 88.71% of large ones. In Spain, 60.38%. Size sets the trend, but it does not decide for you. An ERP pays off when reconciling sales, stock and invoices by hand costs you more time and more mistakes than the system itself.

FlexigoTech · Editor in charge: Víctor Gómez · Updated 4 November 2026

Key facts

Versions
Odoo 17, 18, 19 and 20
Checked
in the connector's source code, version 17.0, 18.0, 19.0 and 20.0 · against the sources linked at the end
Reading time
4 min

The data at a glance

Eurostat's survey on the use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software covers companies with at least 10 persons employed, counting employees and self-employed people. These are the 2025 percentages:

Group of companiesUsed an ERP in 2025
All in the EU (10 or more persons)46.45%
Small (10-49 persons)41.08%
Large (250 or more persons)88.71%
Information and communication61.28%
Manufacturing57.62%
Wholesale and retail trade53.77%
Accommodation and food services26.69%
Spain60.38%
Denmark66.25%
Croatia21.89%

Two useful readings. Spain is above 60%, like Denmark and Belgium. And in wholesale and retail trade more than half already use one, 53.77%. If you sell products and your company has more than 10 people, more than half of your sector already works with one.

How to stop copy-pasting between apps (Odoo)
Video: How to stop copy-pasting between apps (Odoo)

What counts as an ERP

Eurostat describes an ERP as software delivered in modules, which can cover planning, purchasing, marketing, sales, customer relations, finance and human resources. And it calls internal integration the electronic and automatic sharing of information between a company's areas, either with several applications hooked to a common database or with a single modular ERP.

So the underlying question is whether your data moves from one area to another on its own, or someone moves it by hand. An online shop with an invoicing program and a stock spreadsheet has three places that do not talk to each other.

What size are you?

For the EU, under Recommendation 2003/361, a micro company has fewer than 10 employees and up to €2 million in turnover or balance sheet; a small one, fewer than 50 employees and up to €10 million; and an SME in general, fewer than 250 employees and a turnover of up to €50 million or a balance sheet of up to €43 million.

Eurostat's survey starts at small companies. If you are a micro company, the figures above do not describe you yet, but they do show what companies of the size you are aiming for are doing.

How to decide in your case

Diagram with three questions to decide whether a company needs an ERP now
Three questions to see whether your turn has come: one channel and one person keeping things up to date can live with spreadsheets; the same stock on several channels or orders typed twice call for a system. Illustrative diagram.

It already pays off if any of these sound familiar:

  • You sell the same stock on more than one channel. That is the case we describe in inventory in Excel.
  • You copy marketplace orders by hand into your invoicing program.
  • Several people touch the same data and nobody knows which version is right.
  • Your invoicing spreadsheet already works out books or summaries with macros.

You can wait if you sell on a single channel, with a short catalogue, and the same person keeps everything up to date. With or without an ERP, the Spanish Commercial Code asks for orderly accounts that let you follow your operations in chronological order, and for books, correspondence, documents and receipts to be kept for six years. If that is already hard with loose spreadsheets, it is one more sign.

If you sell on several marketplaces through ChannelEngine

With Odoo and our connector, the orders from all your ChannelEngine channels land in the same system where you run your warehouse and your invoices. Its scheduled tasks are active from installation:

  • Every 15 minutes it brings each account's new orders into Odoo, stores them and confirms to ChannelEngine that it has them.
  • Every 30 minutes it sends the pending prices and stock.
  • Every 15 minutes it sends shipments and their tracking details to ChannelEngine.
  • Every 2 hours it imports returns.
List of ChannelEngine orders inside Odoo
Orders from your ChannelEngine channels in one Odoo list. Odoo screenshot with demo data.

How we set it up

At FlexigoTech we implement Odoo 17, 18, 19 or 20 with our connectors, for the size your company is today. Odoo Online does not accept third-party modules, so we work on Odoo.sh or on your own server. The Connector plan starts at €49 a month, VAT excluded. If the way you work needs a piece that does not exist yet, we build it to measure: we analyse the case for free and give you a closed price before we write any code.

Write to comercial@flexigobe.com, leave your details on our contact page or book a call.

Keep reading

You use ChannelEngine, but your stock lives in Excel: what nobody tells youIf you use ChannelEngine but your stock and orders live in spreadsheets, this is what breaks and what changes with Odoo and the FlexigoTech connector.Do you need an ERP to sell on ManoMano? The signsA checklist to tell whether your ManoMano business already needs an ERP, and what Odoo does with the connector: orders, offers, stock, carriers and translations.Selling on Temu without an ERP: when do you need one?If you sell on Temu with Seller Center and spreadsheets, these are the signs you need an ERP, and what changes when Temu runs inside Odoo.
Checked in the connector's source code (version 17.0, 18.0, 19.0 and 20.0) and the linked sources

Sources