Flatfile’s story

In 2018, David Boskovic and Eric Crane, both then product managers at Envoy, kept encountering the same challenge with their customers day after day: they struggled to import data. Every business needs to move data between systems, but the process was slow, expensive, and prone to errors - because of what the industry calls “dirty data”. 

“No matter how good your migration tools were, dirty data would always get in the way," says Jason Wolf, Director of Data Engineering at Flatfile. “That’s the reality everybody has faced.”

When they had that realization, they saw an opportunity: what if there was a universal tool that could make even the most complex data migration simple? 

Enter Flatfile, an AI-powered data exchange platform that helps enterprises collect, transform and validate their data. Their platform automates the process of mapping and cleaning data, making it easy to move data between systems without errors.

Their solution struck a chord. Today, Flatfile enjoys rapid growth, has raised nearly $100 million in funding and has won numerous G2 awards. 

Growth limited by Salesforce 

As Flatfile scaled rapidly, the team needed a CRM that could not only handle their growth but also manage their complex data relationships. After trying several CRMs, none delivered.

“We started with Airtable, then we graduated to Freshsales, and then we eventually landed on Salesforce, but there was always this sync needed between Salesforce and everything else. It created chaos,” says Jason. “Records would exist in one format in Salesforce and overwrite something else, or legacy settings would just break the sync completely.”

Managing customer data in Salesforce became a daily struggle for the business. Duplicate records piled up, and even making simple changes was a challenge. Salesforce’s limitations were stunting Flatfile’s growth. 

“It was like death by a thousand cuts,” says Jason. “High profile opportunities were slipping through the cracks - big companies, big names, and big founders that we wanted to be talking to were ending up lost.”

The Attio moment

Flatfile knew they needed to figure out a better solution. When their CEO David Boskovic discovered Attio, he immediately saw the potential.

“Could this just be our entire stack?” he asked Jason. Despite Jason’s usual skepticism about new tools, he was quickly convinced.

“I’m always skeptical when people throw me random tools,” laughs Jason, “but Attio was different; it didn’t take me long to see that there was something real here. The data model is super powerful, and the relationships between objects are really flexible. We can connect to everything downstream, and it all just works.” 

Attio’s powerful data model, automation engine, auto data enrichment, and custom objects gave Flatfile exactly what Salesforce couldn’t deliver. Within a month, Flatfile had moved their entire CRM to Attio.

How Flatfile uses Attio

Attio’s data model and automations are at the core of Flatfile’s use case. The team uses Attio for everything from building out their sales engine, to tracking every customer interaction, to assembling their own dashboards for historical reporting.

A single source of truth for all GTM efforts 

Flatfile uses Attio to track and automate the entire sales funnel, from first touchpoint to deal close. “We started using automations and the Deals object as tracking mechanisms,” says Jason. “When there’s any kind of activity from a company or person, whether that’s an inbound form submission or an outbound email campaign, it creates a Deal record so that any subsequent activity gets attached to it. An individual user’s journey is so much easier to understand when you can view it in the context of the rest of their company.”

“Between the People and Deals objects, we have a complete overview of all historical emails and interactions with every prospect. It’s had quite an impact.” Having all of this information in one place has reduced the time spent finding important details that should be readily-tracked.

This automated approach, combined with all their data in one place, gives their team unprecedented visibility into their customer relationships.

Enterprise-grade self-serve reporting

Attio’s reporting capabilities have transformed how Flatfile’s sales and revenue teams work with their data.

“The fact that Attio has historical reporting right out of the box is incredible. That initial realization really blew my mind,” says Jason. Teams can now track how metrics change over time, seeing exactly what’s working and what isn’t.

For the first time, everyone in the company can access and understand Flatfile’s data without help from engineering. Success and sales are able to build their own dashboards in minutes.

“The team has the ability to see forecasts, trends and reports, and frankly, they feel a lot more empowered to make decisions and build on Attio themselves.” With decision-making easier than ever, Flatfile’s different teams can work confidently and drive the business forward.

Building the CRM they’ve always wanted

“A lot of the structure we use has parity with how we were using Salesforce, but it’s been dramatically modernized,” says Jason. “There’s the same intricate data structure, but none of the headache or legacy baggage.” 

The impact across the company has been considerable. Attio’s powerful data model and intuitive UI means, for the first time, everyone can access the data they need quickly and automatically. “Attio makes even the most complicated processes very intuitive. All of our data is in one place and anyone can use it to their advantage.”

As a company with a mission to make data work better for businesses, Flatfile needed a CRM that lived up to that standard as well. 

Where Salesforce’s legacy structure was rigid and held them back, Attio allows Flatfile to focus on what matters: scaling their business and building successful customer relationships. 

“Attio is powerful, intuitive, and incredibly flexible. It’s going to do everything you think you want, and then surprise you with what else is possible.”