Knowledge base
Guides and how-tos
These are the reference pages we got tired of typing out by email. They cover how to pull a real copy of your data out of a platform, what to put in writing before a subscription rolls over, and whether your problem is even a software problem.
Each one is written to be useful even if you never hire anybody. If a guide gets you to fix your configuration and stay put, it did its job.
Getting your data out
How to take a real copy of what a platform holds for you, whether or not you are leaving it.
How to export your data out of Zoho CRM
Every export path Zoho CRM gives you, in the order to use them, plus the things that never come out in a file and have to be captured another way.
Contracts and renewals
What to check before a subscription rolls over, and what the incumbent platforms actually cost to stand up.
What to ask before signing a Smartsheet or monday.com renewal
The questions worth putting in writing before a work management subscription rolls over, and what a straight answer to each one sounds like.
Salesforce and NetSuite implementation cost and timeline, by company size
A sourced comparison table at 50, 100, 250, 500, and 1,000 employees. Every figure is cited and dated, and the thin-data cells say so.
Deciding what to build
Tests you can run on your own operation before anyone writes a line of code or a proposal.
How to tell whether your business actually needs custom software
Seven tests you can run against your own operation this week. Most businesses that run them find a configuration problem, not a build.
How to use them
What's in a guide that isn't in a vendor help page
A vendor documents the happy path. It has no reason to write down what its product does badly. These pages carry the parts a help center leaves out, which are the ones that decide how your week goes.
The limits, stated plainly
Row caps on an export. Attachments that come out as links to files you're about to lose access to, and custom fields that arrive with the label but not the picklist. A vendor will tell you an export exists. These pages cover what's missing from it.
What doesn't come out at all
Automations, dashboards, permission schemes, form logic and comment threads generally have no export path in any usable form. Know that before you give notice and you're planning a rebuild. Find out after and it's a nasty surprise on cutover weekend.
The contract mechanics
Notice windows, auto-renew clauses, dormant seats you're still paying for, and what happens to your data after the term ends. These decide your options more than any feature does. Nobody reads them until it's too late to matter.
The case for staying
Each guide names the situation where the answer is to keep what you've got and fix how it's set up. We can afford to write that because no vendor pays us anything. A company that fixes its configuration and calls back in two years beats a build that should never have happened.
Questions
Questions about this section
Including the obvious one. Why would a firm that sells software builds publish instructions for staying put?
Are these guides useful if I never hire anybody?
Yes, and they're written that way on purpose. Every guide is a set of steps you can follow yourself, including the parts nobody enjoys writing down, like the export limits and the notice windows. Follow one, fix your configuration, never call us. That's a good outcome.
Who writes them, and why should I trust the answer?
David Verneuille, who founded and runs Black Badger. The specifics come out of running these migrations for clients. Not out of a vendor help center. We know which export options exist, which ones quietly drop data, and what has to be rebuilt by hand on the other side. We were a partner to the programs behind Smartsheet, monday.com, Wrike and Zoho, and we canceled those arrangements. So there's nothing on these pages written to keep a vendor relationship intact.
How is a guide different from a blog post here?
A guide is a reference you come back to. It carries procedures and checklists, and it gets updated when a platform changes something that matters. A post is shorter. An observation, or a pattern we keep seeing, and you read it once. Both follow the same rule on prices and timeframes, which is that we don't publish them.
Why don't the guides ever quote a price?
Because a number published before we've seen your data and your integrations would be a guess dressed up as a fact. The one guide that does deal with money, the implementation cost research, uses published third-party sources and shows its working. None of the numbers on it are ours. For your own project the honest sequence is a strategy call, then a written scope, then a firm number. Anyone handing you a figure before that is pricing a fantasy.
How often are these updated?
When something changes that would make a step wrong. Export flows and contract terms are the two things that move, and they're the two things these guides depend on, so each one carries a last-updated date you can check. If you follow a step and find a platform has moved it, tell us. That's usually how we find out.
Can you write a guide on something specific to my situation?
We add one when the same question arrives three times, so send yours over and it'll count. We don't write a guide to have a guide, and there's no content calendar driving this section. If your question is really specific to your setup, a strategy call answers it faster than waiting on a page. Either way the answer is free.
How this section grows
Guides get added when the same question arrives three times
Each one here started as an answer typed into an email often enough that writing it down properly became the cheaper option. That's the whole editorial policy.
If you've got a question that belongs here and isn't answered yet, send it over. The service pages below answer the most common ones directly, and the blog covers the shorter pieces.