The big lesson: in vertical SaaS, the data migration is where the deal is won or lost. Anonymized; the playbook generalizes.
ERP SaaSShipped
Workflow software replacing spreadsheets for a specific operator
An industry where operators still ran the business on a stitched-together spreadsheet stack. Generic ERPs didn't fit the workflow; building a vertical one meant going deep on the operator's actual day.
My role
Product on workflow, onboarding, and the data-migration motion.
The insight
For vertical SaaS, the onboarding *is* the product. A customer who can't get their existing data into the new system doesn't churn — they never start. We built the migration as a concierge service before we built half the features.
Scale signal
B2B vertical SaaS.
Updates
- Apr 2022Replaced self-serve onboarding with a one-day data-migration concierge. Time-to-first-value dropped from weeks to a day.
- Feb 2023Spreadsheets-to-system migration tool generalized; activation rate roughly doubled.