Act 2, scene 5: Onboarding and configuration today

Scene 5: Onboarding and configuration today

The first layer the customer meets is onboarding: gathering requirements, mapping them to features and configuration, customising, migrating data and training people. The customer cannot use the product until onboarding is done, and enterprise implementation is still measured in months. The configuration sits in setup screens, spreadsheets and files such as JSON, YAML or XML. A schema lists the fields and their types, while the rules for valid combinations are written nowhere it can enforce, so errors often surface after go-live. For the provider, the knowledge sits with a few people, every attribute needs review, and the work repeats whenever a law, a policy or the organisation changes.