How BigChange built an automated, self-serve customer onboarding experience

BigChange, a leading field management software provider, helps businesses streamline job management—from scheduling and tracking to CRM and invoicing. George Matthews, operations manager for customer onboarding, leads the team responsible for getting customers up and running on BigChange’s platform.

For George and his team, onboarding is about more than just getting customers onto the system—it’s about helping them see value as quickly as possible, maintaining engagement from sales to go-live, and ensuring customers stay for the long run. 

But before Rocketlane, onboarding was anything but seamless.

‍

Challenges before Rocketlane

‍

A disjointed process that stretched teams thin

Before implementing Rocketlane, BigChange’s onboarding team juggled multiple tools—spreadsheets, their own CRM, Outlook, and emails. Keeping track of onboarding progress was a challenge, and critical details often got lost in scattered communication. Their setup mirrored the very problem they were solving for their customers. 

“A lot of our customers are on paper-based processes, and we bring them into the modern age. We needed to do the same for our own onboarding” 

‍

No central source of truth

With information spread across emails and disparate systems, there was no single place for project updates. This made handovers between team members difficult, especially when someone went on leave. 

Lack of customer visibility and engagement

Customers had limited insight into their onboarding progress, which often led to long email threads and misaligned expectations. There was no clear way for customers to track what they needed to do or what the next steps were. 

“We had no concept of live collaboration—just long-winded emails outlining every task” 

‍

Time tracking was a manual effort

BigChange offers different onboarding packages, each with allocated hours. Tracking time against projects was a manual, cumbersome process that didn’t provide granular insights. Their CRM could only track time at a high level—making it difficult to optimize onboarding efficiency.

‍

Life with Rocketlane

"People struggled to switch off on holidays because they knew they’d come back to chaos. Now, we say: if it didn’t happen in Rocketlane, it didn’t happen.”‍

‍

A seamless, structured onboarding process

With Rocketlane, BigChange now has a centralized onboarding hub. Every project, task, and conversation lives in one place, making it easy for team members to step in and keep projects moving—even when someone is on leave.

“They can log in and instantly know what’s next. It keeps them focused on their goal”

‍

Onboarding is now self-serve

Instead of waiting for a weekly webinar or back-and-forth emails, customers now have access to a structured onboarding journey with clear tasks, embedded guides, and walkthrough videos. This shift has accelerated time-to-value while freeing up the onboarding team to focus on higher-touch interactions where needed.

“When a new customer joins, they get a set of tasks they can complete on their own—without needing to wait for us.”

‍

Real-time time tracking and audit trails

BigChange can now monitor onboarding time down to the task level. This data helps them refine their onboarding packages and ensure customers get the most from their allocated hours.

‍

Visibility for the whole organization

Enterprise customers often have multiple stakeholders involved in onboarding. With Rocketlane, everyone—customers, sponsors, and internal teams, has access to real-time project updates. 

"The economic buyer can now see project progress without asking us for updates. It’s changed how we collaborate" 

‍

A superior experience for customers and teams

Rocketlane has fundamentally changed how onboarding works at BigChange. Customers move through onboarding with greater clarity, while internal teams work more efficiently, without the stress of lost emails or unclear handovers.