Welcome to Change Makers, our series highlighting customer stories and builders making an incredible impact with Airtable. Today’s Change Maker is an Airtable MVP who created a structured inventory management system to turn valuable data into clear, timely, and reliable decision-making.
About the Builder
Matthew Williams (
What's your go-to productivity hack or ritual?
Keeping everything structured in one place. Whether it's tasks, data, or projects, I try to avoid scattered tools and instead build systems that bring everything together. It reduces context switching and makes decision-making much quicker.
What's your superpower at work?
Turning messy or fragmented processes into structured systems that people can actually use. A lot of the time the data already exists, it just needs organising in a way that supports better decisions.
What's the most surprising use case you've seen (or built) in Airtable?
Building a system that connects inventory management, purchasing, and sustainability tracking in one place. What started as a way to manage stock levels has evolved into something that also supports Scope 3 emissions insight, which wasn't the original intention.
What advice would you give to someone just getting started with Airtable?
Don't try to build everything at once. Start with a simple structure that solves one problem, then build on it over time. The real value comes from how everything connects, not from how complex it looks at the start.
The Challenge & Airtable Solution
Before implementing Airtable, Matthew's team managed inventory and purchasing across disconnected spreadsheets, emails, and manual processes.
Stock checks were time-consuming and required manually reviewing multiple data sources. Supplier lead times weren't consistently tracked and purchasing decisions were largely reactive, which increased the risk of stockouts for materials critical to project delivery.
The core challenge wasn't a lack of data, but rather the absence of a structured system to turn that data into clear, timely, and reliable decision-making.
Matthew chose Airtable because it allowed inventory, supplier, and purchasing data to be structured within a single relational system. The ability to link stock items, supplier data, and purchase workflows made it possible to move from static data tracking to a more dynamic and connected operational model.
“Compared to traditional spreadsheet-based approaches, Airtable enabled a shift from simply storing data to actively using it to support decision-making, particularly around stock management, forecasting, and purchasing,” he explains.
The solution connects three core components: inventory tracking with stock levels, usage rates, and minimum thresholds; supplier data including lead times and location; and purchase tracking from request through to delivery. Stock movement tracking captures real usage patterns over time.
The system introduces rolling usage analysis to support demand forecasting and data-driven identification of reorder requirements based on usage patterns and lead times. Airtable AI powers automated reorder prompting to the procurement team for specific items and quantities, while minimum stock logic aligns to supplier lead times and structured workflows manage purchase requests and approvals.
Beyond core procurement, the system also supports waste tracking derived from inventory usage, providing visibility of material consumption and disposal patterns. It offers early-stage Scope 3 Category 4 (upstream transport) insight using supplier location and delivery data as a proxy for transport impact. This creates a centralised and scalable system that supports informed purchasing decisions while enabling better visibility of operational and sustainability-related impacts.
📺 Want to see it in action? Matthew shared a demo of his workflow here:
The Results
Matthew’s system has already delivered measurable improvements across multiple dimensions!
Time spent manually reviewing stock levels and purchase requirements has been significantly reduced, with faster identification of reorder needs through structured data. The team has shifted from reactive purchasing to data-informed procurement decisions, with clear visibility of stock position, usage trends, and supplier lead times now available at a glance.
Risk has been reduced through better alignment between purchasing and actual demand, minimizing the potential for stockouts of critical materials. Operational consistency has improved as well, and purchasing workflows are now standardised across users, reducing reliance on individual knowledge or manual tracking. The system is designed to scale, capable of expanding across additional sites and categories while handling increasing data volume without added complexity.
As an emerging capability, the system has also improved visibility of waste generation linked directly to material usage and established an initial understanding of supplier-related transport impact based on location and delivery patterns. This creates a foundation for future Scope 3 tracking without requiring separate systems.
What's Next
Matthew plans to expand the system across additional sites and enhance the forecasting capability as more historical data becomes available. There's a clear opportunity to further develop the sustainability layer, including more accurate Scope 3 emissions tracking, improved supplier-level insights, and better alignment with reporting frameworks.
“Longer term, the aim is to evolve the system from a tracking tool into a more predictive decision-support platform that integrates operational efficiency with sustainability performance,” Matthew says.
Did this use case inspire you? Drop a comment below if you're similarly using Airtable to leverage customer feedback into proactive data, and share how you're using Airtable to change the way you work for a chance to be our next Change Maker spotlight!