If your information pipeline is starting to feel noisy, your project visibility probably feels cloudy too. WhatsApp threads, dense email chains, paper notes from the workshop floor, half a dozen Excel files that everyone edits but nobody quite trusts. Somewhere in all of that, the answer to "where is this project right now?" gets lost, and the person asking the question ends up chasing four different colleagues to piece it together.
That's the brief La Boiserie Intérieure Ltée, who operate as Sogal in Mauritius, brought to us. They're the Mauritian representatives of the French interior fittings brand Sogal, with two showrooms in Phoenix and Grand Baie, a production facility in Terre Rouge, and a team that has been designing and installing custom wardrobes, kitchens, and sliding doors across the island since 2013. They knew what was slowing them down by the time they came to us, which made the conversation a lot easier than it might otherwise have been.
In this use case, we'll walk you through how we built a custom Airtable ERP that gave them one tool the whole team could rely on, instead of several that they had to constantly cross-check.
The client: Sogal Partners in Mauritius
Our client is an institution in Mauritian interior fittings. Their clients range from individual homeowners renovating a single room to architects and developers fitting out full villas, and every order is custom: measured on-site, then crafted in their workshop in Terre Rouge using high-quality components sourced from Sogal in France and other specialist suppliers, before being installed locally by the team.
That kind of operation has a lot of moving parts. A typical project flows from sales (taking the order and producing the quote) through on-site measurement, sourcing components from Sogal and other suppliers, in-house manufacturing in the Terre Rouge workshop, installation, and finally handling post-sales needs. Each stage hands off to the next, and the person picking it up needs a different information stream than the person before them. The work is craft-led, but the systems behind it had been quietly accumulating lags as demand grew, and were starting to show their age.
The challenge: when various information streams distract your team
The previous setup wasn't unusual for a business of this size, but rather it just wasn't sustainable any more.
For one, essential project information lived in disparate places. There were WhatsApp threads between sales and the workshop, email chains with clients, paper forms, and Excel files for stock and quotes. While each of those tools worked perfectly well in isolation, the problem was that the gaps between them created knots.
The consequences were small from the outside but ate hours every week from the inside. Sales would quote a delivery date without knowing whether the article was actually in stock, because the stock figures information was spread across spreadsheets. Updated inventory would be accounted for in one Excel file while production was working from a slightly older copy of another. Accounting would chase project status the day before invoicing, because there was no central place to see whether something was finished or still in transit. And when a client called three months after installation about a specific piece, finding the original project meant scrolling back through various WhatsApp threads.
Off-the-shelf project management tools had been considered before but never adopted, and there was a good reason for that. Tools like Trello, Asana, and Monday are designed to manage tasks, not stock, and a custom furniture manufacturer's work is fundamentally about both at once. The team didn't need a better task list. They needed a system that could hold projects, clients, articles, and stock in one place and keep the connections between them clean and primed for a busy business.
The solution: one custom ERP Airtable system, two connected backbones
We built this custom ERP system in Airtable around two connected bases. One holds projects, the other holds inventory, and the link between them is where most of the value extends.
As a central piece, the project base is the home for every active and completed job, linked to a client, articles, the assigned sales rep, and the current stage. A project moves through clear statuses (quoted, confirmed, in production, ready to install, installed, complete) so anyone on the team can see at a glance where things stand without having to ask. The inventory base does the same for every article Sogal Partners stocks or orders, with real-time stock values, supplier info, and pricing in one place. When components arrive from Sogal or another supplier, the storekeeper updates the inventory once and the change is visible to everyone who needs it.
The two bases talk to each other automatically, which is where most of the day-to-day value lives. When an article is assigned to a project, the inventory record updates without anyone having to remember to do it manually. That single connection removes the double entry, and the situation where production discovers an article has already been promised to another client. It sounds obvious in hindsight, but it simplifies everything for this particular use case.
On top of the two bases, we built role-based dashboards so each part of the team has its own view of the data without having to wade through the rest. The sales team has a pipeline view tailored to their workflow, while production gets a dashboard built around the week's builds and installs.
The storekeeper tracks incoming components from suppliers and outgoing items as they leave for installation, and accounting picks up projects that are ready to be billed without having to chase anyone for status. Leadership can zoom out to the whole business whenever they want a higher-level view. Same data, different lenses, and nobody has to learn the parts of the system that don't apply to their job.
We also made sure after-sales activity tracks back to both the client and the original project, which is a small design decision that's easy to skip but pays off dividends. When a customer calls in the future about an installation, the team can pull up the original spec and install notes from the same record, without anyone having to remember which colleague handled the job.
There's also an AI layer built on top of the system, which lets the team ask questions in plain language and get answers without clicking through views. Asking about the status of a specific project, or the current stock level of any article in the system, gets you a useful answer in seconds rather than minutes. It's a small addition rather than the headline of the build, but it makes the ERP system feel current rather than just functional.
Why we chose Airtable (and when we wouldn't)
Sogal Partners' data is fundamentally relational. Every project links to a client, a set of articles, a sales rep, and a stock count that needs to update the moment an article is allocated. That ruled out card-based tools like Trello, Asana, and Monday that don't quite fit this bill.
That left Airtable, Notion, or a custom-built application. Notion has superb features but it was not a fit for this scale. A custom build would have given us perfect control but locked the client to a developer for every future change, which isn't what a growing business with a small in-house team actually wants.
Airtable sat in the right middle thanks to how adaptable it is. It handily treats projects, clients, and stock as connected records, but it is also clear enough that the team can edit and extend it themselves without needing external help, and most of all it is structured enough to layer AI on top later without rebuilding the foundations. It's the right tool for the next three years, and for a growing business, that's the timeframe that actually matters.
What changed for the team
We don't share specific stats from this engagement, but the qualitative shift is the part worth talking about anyway.
Now stakeholders have one tool to confirm, review, and plan projects from, which means less chasing and more focusing on crafting the projects at hand. The biggest change is of course harder to measure but easier to feel: the team finally has one source of truth they can rely on, and that's what changes everything else. They coordinate better, make fewer mistakes, and spend less time on admin and more on delivering custom joinery projects.
Our approach: how we built it
Every Portage Labs build starts with sitting down with the people who'll actually use the system, not just the main stakeholder. For our client, that meant time with sales, the storekeeper, production, and accounting before we wrote a single line of configuration. The structure of the system fell out of those conversations rather than from a template, and we'd much rather start from how the team already works than from an assumed, generic template.
From there, we work in two passes. The v1 prototype is built fast and tested in real conditions, using the team's live projects and stock from day one rather than dummy data. We expect it to need changes, and we leave room for them. The v2 refines based on what surfaced during use: the workflows that need streamlining, the dashboards that need adding, and the connections we hadn't anticipated until the team started using the system in anger. By the time v2 is live, the system fits the way the team actually works rather than how we assumed they would, and that fit is what determines whether it gets used in six months or quietly abandoned. If you want a sense of how we think about building systems that fit the team using them, this is the heart of it.
Working with Portage Labs
Interested in transforming the systems behind your business this year? Portage Labs builds the operational infrastructure that growing companies need, from custom Airtable systems and AI integrations through to data, productivity, and design work. The aim is always the same: a system your team will trust and use effortlessly.
We'd love to chat about what's slowing you down and see how we can help.
Frequently asked questions
Can Airtable handle inventory and project management together?
Yes, and it's one of the few tools that genuinely can. Most project management tools handle workflows, most inventory tools handle stock, and very few connect the two in a way that holds up at scale. Airtable does, which is why when an article is assigned to a project, stock levels update automatically.
How do you centralise WhatsApp and Excel workflows into one tool?
We start by mapping where information actually lives, which is usually a mix of WhatsApp threads, paper forms, and some Excel files. Once we understand the real workflow, we rebuild it inside one Airtable system so the team types data once and every dashboard updates from it. The hardest part of the work is rarely technical. It's understanding what the team genuinely needs to see, when, and in what order.
Do you build custom Airtable systems for clients outside Mauritius?
Yes. Portage Labs works with clients across Mauritius, Canada, and beyond, and we'd love to chat about your setup wherever you are. The goal is always to help clients grow with the right digital solution for them, which sometimes means Airtable, sometimes HubSpot, and sometimes something we build from scratch when nothing off the shelf does the job.
How long does an Airtable project management system take to build?
For most clients, depending on your project size and your availability, we get to a working v1 in two to four weeks from kickoff, with another week or two of refinements once the team has been using it in real conditions. Larger systems with multiple integrations and team training can run six to eight weeks, or need a retainer contract for seamless management. We'll give you a firmer estimate after a short scoping call, once we understand what the system actually needs to do.
What does it cost to build a custom Airtable system?
It depends on scope, including the number of teams, integrations, data sources, and any AI layers on top. Most builds fall within a clear range, and we share a fixed quote after a free 30-minute scoping call so you know exactly what you're committing to before any work starts. Get in touch and we'll walk you through it.
