---
title: "Moving a customer book off spreadsheets and automating renewals"
type: case-study
evidence_type: proof
category: "Customer Success, Renewals & Retention"
publisher: "LeanScale"
date_modified: 2026-08-08
word_count: 272
topics: ["revenue-operations"]
canonical_url: https://knowledge.leanscale.team/customers/moving-a-customer-book-off-spreadsheets-into-an-automated-renewal-engine/
source: "LeanScale Knowledge Hub — https://knowledge.leanscale.team"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to LeanScale."
---

# Moving a customer book off spreadsheets and automating renewals

**Evidence type:** proof (what happened)

A growth-stage legal-technology company was running its entire customer base out of spreadsheets with no structured renewal motion. LeanScale migrated the book into the CRM and built the renewal and customer-success engine on top of it.

## The challenge

The company had grown to a book of more than a hundred customers with no customer-success system behind it. The entire book lived in spreadsheets, renewal dates were tracked by hand, accounts had no assigned owner, and nothing in the CRM told anyone a renewal was approaching until it was nearly on top of them. There was no structured renewal motion at all.

## The approach

Customer book migration
Migrated nearly the entire customer book (100+ accounts) out of spreadsheets into the CRM, backfilling customer-success fields, health status, contract value and renewal dates, then verifying the data account by account.

CS record model and layout
Built a customer-success company view and page layout so CSMs work the account record itself rather than a side spreadsheet, with round-robin CSM assignment applied to new accounts.

Automated renewal engine
Made closed-won deals auto-create a linked renewal deal, then layered a 120-day renewal alert with 90/60/30-day nudges posting into a dedicated Slack channel and creating tasks for the owning CSM.

Enablement and training
Shipped a customer-success enablement site and ran live team training, so the new motion was adopted rather than announced.

## Outcomes

Customer book in the CRM
Nearly the entire customer book (100+ accounts) moved off spreadsheets into the CRM, with customer-success fields, health, contract value and renewal dates backfilled and verified.

Renewal engine live
Closed-won deals now generate a renewal automatically, with 120/90/60/30-day alerts routing into Slack and creating CSM tasks — replacing manual renewal tracking entirely.

Team trained on the new motion
The customer-success team was trained live on the new record model, assignment rules and renewal cadence, with a standing enablement site to refer back to.

## Quotes

> Yeah, I would have expected you guys have more people. I feel you guys do great things.
>
> — Customer, Revenue Operations lead


## Canonical

https://knowledge.leanscale.team/customers/moving-a-customer-book-off-spreadsheets-into-an-automated-renewal-engine/