Most eCommerce teams already have a system – but it lives in chaotic spreadsheets, long email threads, and people’s heads. The result? Lost clients, tasks falling through the cracks, and a constant feeling of overwhelm.
Lenard Adanov is a systems strategist and Notion Brand Ambassador with over 10 years of experience in marketing and operations, and the founder of Adan Media. He helps small and medium-sized businesses replace invisible work with clear structure – one that accelerates growth instead of slowing it down.
At Balkan eCommerce Summit 2026, Lenard will be taking the stage to show how eCommerce teams can move from spreadsheet chaos to a unified system using Notion and the power of Notion AI – a transformation that turns operational friction into competitive advantage.
In this interview, Lenard reveals the most common operational problems in eCommerce businesses, how Notion transforms chaos into a centralized system, and which one process you should systematize first if you want to save time and scale without burning out.
Why should we start using Notion today?
Because most teams are already running an “unofficial” system. It lives in scattered spreadsheets, long email threads, random docs and people’s heads. Notion lets you replace that chaos with one living workspace where tasks, projects, SOPs, content, and decisions sit together instead of in silos.
For eCommerce, that means your marketing calendar talks to your product catalog, your support macros link to your SOPs, and your team executes from one source of truth instead of fighting over which file is “the latest.” You start moving from “Where is this?” to “What’s the next best move?” in a single place.
You help companies move from spreadsheet chaos to structured systems. What is the most common operational problem you see eCommerce teams struggling with before they switch to one central system?
The most common problem is invisible work.
In spreadsheets, you can track numbers, but you cannot really see how work flows. Who owns this launch? What is blocked? What depends on what? What happens after an issue is escalated? All of that is usually hidden in people’s memory, private chats, or separate files.
The result is the same pattern everywhere: missed handoffs, duplicated work, and “We’ve done this before, but I don’t remember where we documented it.” When we centralize into one Notion workspace, that invisible work becomes a clear system: owners, statuses, SOPs, and decisions all connected so the business can scale beyond heroics.
From founders interviewed for my upcoming book on Processes in SMEs in Europe the response is striking.
- Losing potential clients and lack of systematic follow-up
- This appears as “Losing leads or forgetting to follow up,” “We lose potential clients or forget to follow up,” “the biggest challenge is finding clients,” and similar.
- ≈ 70-75% of respondents place this problem first or among their top 3.
- Tasks that get lost, left unfinished, or drag on too long
- “Tasks slipping through the cracks,” “Tasks get lost or remain unfinished,” “Projects are delayed due to unclear responsibilities,” “I don’t have a clear picture of what is happening right now.”
- ≈ 60-65% mention some variation of this problem.
- Misunderstandings and misalignment of expectations with clients
- “Client miscommunication / misalignment,” “Misunderstandings or misalignment with clients,” complaints about lack of clarity about what was ordered and what will be delivered.
- ≈ 45-50% explicitly list this as a major bottleneck or risk.
- Lack of clear internal documentation and processes (SOPs, wiki, single source of truth)
- Many people write “Everything is in my head,” “We don’t document processes,” “We don’t have a formal library,” “I want clear documentation for internal processes,” “lack of a centralized system.”
- ≈ 50-55% either directly admit they lack structure or say this is exactly what they want help with.
- Training and onboarding that take too long, plus lack of good people
- “Employee training/onboarding taking too long,” “Onboarding new staff takes too long,” “it is very hard to find young and motivated people,” “lack of good talent.”
- ≈ 35-40% put people and onboarding among their top problems.
- Poor coordination with suppliers and partners / supply chain and logistics
- “Supplier or partner miscoordination,” problematic warehouse software, delayed deliveries, inaccurate stock levels, desire “for supply to run more smoothly.”
- ≈ 30-35% have noticeable difficulties here (more strongly expressed in trade, manufacturing, logistics, eCommerce).
- Financial fog and stress around cash flow
- “Delays or confusion with invoicing and finances,” stress from intercompany debt, unpredictable expenses, late payments, “lack of automation” and the need for better visibility.
- ≈ 30% mention this directly as a major source of stress.
- Overload and ‘one‑person show’ feeling
- Phrases like “I don’t know, but I feel overwhelmed,” “I do too many things in the business,” “the role of a ‘one man show’,” “I don’t have time for marketing/growth because I do everything else.”
- ≈ 40-45% describe chronic overload and a need for better delegation/systems.
As a Notion Brand Ambassador, what makes Notion especially powerful for scaling fast-growing eCommerce teams?
Three things: flexibility, centralization, and speed of iteration.
- Flexibility: Every eCommerce business has its own mix of channels, tools, and processes. Notion is not a rigid app you must adapt to. It’s a workspace you can shape into a CRM, an operations hub, a content engine, or a training system that matches how your team actually works. It’s all based on individual building blocks much like Lego. You can build anything you set your mind to.
- Centralization: Notion becomes the “home” for everything: product data, marketing briefs, UGC libraries, returns SOPs, hiring pipelines, and meeting notes. Integrations then connect this home to your existing tools, so people do not have to jump between 10 tabs to understand what is happening. It’s not about necessarily doing everything within Notion, but it is the place where you can integrate all your external tools to reduce tool sprawl and have it as your central system and structure as a sort of “Command Center”.
- Speed of iteration: Fast-growing teams change their processes monthly, even daily. In Notion, you can evolve your system as you learn, without waiting for developers. You can adjust views, properties, and automations in hours, not quarters. eCommerce teams need visibility and actionable intel 24/7. They need to see what’s going on in every part of their business, from suppliers and warehouse management to what keywords are going well and bringing in the best CPC and CPA for ads so they can then forecast sales and scale more efficiently with the right data to support it.
Many founders fear that structure will slow them down. How do you show teams that the right systems actually create more speed, not less?
I frame structure as “reducing friction,” not “adding bureaucracy”. A lot of people rightfully see structure as a time-waste because they spend more time updating CRMs and task management software than they spend in actually doing their tasks. Not exactly the type of effectiveness we’re looking for out of our teams.
We start by mapping where organizations are already losing speed:
- answering the same questions over and over
- searching for files and messages
- re-inventing recurring processes like launches, promos, and onboarding
- fixing avoidable mistakes because there was no clear checklist
- trying to handle multiple spreadsheets containing fragmented data
Then we introduce just enough structure in Notion: simple pipelines, clear owners, ready-made templates, and SOPs that live where the work happens. The test is very practical: do people get to “done” faster and with fewer surprises?
Once teams feel that structure removes decisions (“How do we do this again?”) and frees time for real work, the fear disappears. They see that the system is not a cage; it is a runway that fuels real growth.
How does Notion AI change the way eCommerce teams manage operations, content, and decision-making on a daily basis?
Notion AI turns your workspace into an active partner, not just a passive database. If Notion by itself gives your company structure, then Notion AI gives it a voice. A way for you to talk directly to your business and ask it where it hurts and what you can do next. It integrates seamlessly into your calendar, meetings, tasks, marketing and more.
- Operations: You can summarize long tickets and meeting notes into clear action lists, generate first-draft SOPs from how you actually did something, and quickly standardize processes across markets or brands.
- Content: Your content team can turn product details into briefs, email sequences, ad variants, and social posts directly where your assets live. AI can adapt tone, language, and format without copying content into external tools. Take all your ads and analyze the data for keywords not just “this ad did well” but “why did it do well”? How can we replicate the results?
- Decision-making: Instead of scrolling through pages of updates, you can ask AI to surface what changed this week, risks by project, or key decisions from a meeting. It compresses information overload into something leaders and operators can act on quickly.
- Closed ecosystem for the AI: One of the key aspects of Notion AI is that your data remains yours. No AI models get trained on it so it’s all the benefits of the paid versions of Chat-GPT, Claude Sonnet and Claude Opus, Perplexity, and Gemini Pro without the downsides.
The big shift is that your documentation is no longer “dead text.” AI helps you reuse, remix, and understand it in real time. If you have your company principles and values in one place and want to make sure your content reflects it? Simple – have AI go through both pages and make sure it’s all as it should be. You have processes written out and want to know that tasks are completed properly? Easy to use checklists are done in seconds. All with your business needs in mind.
For founders and operators attending the Balkan eCommerce Summit, what is the one process they should systematize first if they want to save time and scale without burning out?
Start with your campaign and promotion lifecycle from idea to post-mortem.
In most eCommerce businesses, this is where the money is made and where the most chaos lives: new product drops, seasonal promos, influencer pushes, email flows, ad tests. If you turn this into a repeatable system in Notion – with clear stages, owners, checklists, content slots, and a simple review loop – you immediately reduce stress for everyone.
Once that engine is systematized, you can layer on customer support workflows, inventory and purchasing communication, and hiring. But if your campaign machine runs reliably, you buy back time, reduce last-minute fires, and create space to think strategically instead of constantly firefighting.
Secure your ticket at balkanecommerce.com and meet Lenard in person on April 28-29 at Inter Expo Center – a two-day gathering with leading practitioners who turn processes into weapons for growth.