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Leaving a SaaS tool without losing data history
Short answer
Leaving a SaaS tool without losing history needs a trial export and a check that an employee can reconstruct a past decision from it. A file of records often lacks the attachments, so you count the file coverage and what needs explaining before you switch off the old system. At Syntalith an app costs from €3,000 net, and at 150 history searches a month of 15 minutes each it pays back in 3.3 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net per application, fixed price before contract
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 4–10 weeks
- free prototype on your documents
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
Data and systems: statistics 2026
3.3 mo.
payback of a €3,000 app at 150 history searches a month: €1,309 of work today, €394 with checking and the model. Scenario.
50%
According to the European Commission (2026), half of EU SMEs and mid-caps name high investment costs as a barrier to AI.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
48%
According to the European Commission (2026), 48% of EU SMEs and mid-caps name a lack of expertise as a barrier to AI.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
20.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 20.0% of EU companies with at least 10 employees used AI.
Source: Eurostat, 20% of EU enterprises use AI technologies (2025) ↗
52.7%
According to Eurostat (2025), 52.7% of EU enterprises used paid cloud services.
Source: Eurostat, 53% of EU enterprises used paid cloud services in 2025 (2025) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
The history has to answer an employee's question
A company is changing its ticketing system. The downloaded report holds numbers, dates, descriptions and final states. An account manager wants to check why the replacement of a specific part was agreed, and the answer sits in a comment and an attachment that the export did not cover. The employee still opens the old system.
In the archive, an employee searches for the case by its old number or by customer and sees the materials in a context that makes sense. A source label shows where each record comes from, and any missing part of the history is named openly. Open cases move to the new system with a link to the archive, because the person taking over needs the current responsibility and what is left to do.
- Cases in the trial
- 200
- Attachments linked in the source
- 600
- Readable after download
- 570
- Coverage
- 570 ÷ 600 = 95%
To explain: 30 attachments × 4 min
2 h
Hypothetical figures, to be replaced with the result of the trial export. Counting records is not enough; you have to open the files.
- An old case found by number and by customer
- A decision explained from the materials kept
- Open cases in the new system with a link
- Gaps described, with a person responsible
What it costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 150 history searches × 15 min = 37.5 h (€1,309)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 30% of the time
- €393
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €1
- Cost of one case
- €8.72 today, €2.63 with the system
- Saving
- €915 a month
Payback of €3,000
3.3 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 3,000 input tokens and 300 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The count covers the work around a case: searching, reading, writing and passing it on. What remains is the time to check the result, 30% of today's work in the scenario. Before the quote we time both on 20 to 100 cases the team has already handled, in a €0 test that takes 5 working days.
An archive needs looking after too: granting access, keeping search working and keeping files readable. Agree an export of the data with its relations, access to the code and documentation for the next contractor.
Check what the available export contains
Atlassian describes exporting Jira issues to CSV, including comments when all fields are exported, and notes that attachment files are not downloaded this way. Check the scope of the export for your product, plan and permissions, and ask the vendor about transfer mechanisms and access to the history after the service ends. The new product's own importer may be enough. A custom archive is worth considering when the team needs the old history and the new system should run a simpler workflow.
The new system imports everything with attachments
the vendor's importer
included in the new system
History needed, a simpler new workflow
an archive with search and links
from €3,000
History and workflow in one place
a full migration with mapping
priced after a trial
Where to start
The first step is a trial export of a few closed and ongoing cases, and a check that the team can reconstruct a decision from them. For the call, describe one case the team goes back to after the work is finished. We build such a rollout as part of AI apps. For the free analysis, a description of one case from recent weeks and of the tools it ran through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: an archive after SaaS
We run the same count for your company in the free analysis.
€2,327
a month for matching 1,000 documents to cases by hand
Payback: 1.5 mo.
4 minutes per document matched to a case and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: reading a document in our case-file system (about €0.0002) plus matching it to the case and a note on what is missing (Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 2,000 + 300 tokens), at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
