Case Study

The Flagship Build

Replacing 6 SaaS Platforms With One Internal System — in 74 Days

194,954
Lines of production code
13.4×
Output acceleration
$82,640
Costs displaced

The Problem

A multi-vertical business spanning the US and South Africa was bleeding money on fragmented software:

  • 6 separate SaaS platforms — CRM, affiliate tracking, social management, email, marketing automation, phone system
  • $1,565/month in platform subscriptions
  • $9,046/month at peak for external contractors
  • Data lived in 6 different places. Nothing talked to each other.

Every integration was a failure point. The operator spent hours managing vendor relationships instead of building the business.

The Decision

Build one internal system to replace all six.

What Was Built

A single operations platform handling everything the 6 vendors used to do — CRM, affiliate tracking, analytics, communications, and multi-tenant management — processing leads across multiple verticals and geographies from one codebase.

  • 135 database tables
  • 20 external integrations (12 inbound, 8 outbound)
  • Multi-tenant architecture (Admin, Partner, Affiliate, Business roles)
  • 616,543 leads processed

The Results

Cost Trajectory

Monthly Operating Cost
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Sep 2025  ████████████████████████████████████  $8,367
Oct 2025  ██████████████████████████           $6,070
Nov 2025  ████████████████████████████████     $6,999
Dec 2025  █████                                $1,035
Jan 2026  ████                                  $825

                                         90% reduction

Before → After

Before After
Software vendors 6 platforms ($1,565/mo) 1 internal system
Contractor spend $9,046/mo peak $0/mo
Monthly operating cost $6,312 average ~$825
Data sources 6 (fragmented) 1 (unified)
Total costs displaced — $82,640

The Timeline

Output Acceleration Over the Build
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Oct        ██                          Foundation
Nov        ███                         Building patterns
Late Dec   ████████████                Operator hits stride
Early Jan  ████████████████████████████████  Peak execution
Late Jan   ████████████                Sustained high output

           ──────────────────────────────────────►
           13.4x faster by January vs. October

Same person. Same project. The system got faster because every new feature built on patterns established earlier. October was investment. January was the return.

Built in 74 active days. Peak day: 89 units of work shipped on January 1, 2026.

Why It Matters

This isn't a technology story — it's a business leverage story.

One operator replaced an entire vendor ecosystem and contractor team. The business now owns its infrastructure completely. No vendor lock-in. No integration fragility. No monthly SaaS drain.

The platform processes 600K+ leads across multiple verticals and geographies. It does what 6 separate tools used to do, faster, with data in one place.

Key Numbers

Metric Value
Platforms replaced 6
Build time 74 active days
Monthly cost reduction 90%
Total costs displaced $82,640
Leads processed 616,543
External dependency at completion ~7%

References

  1. Keating, M.G. (2026). "Foundation: The Compounding Knowledge Base." Stealth Labz CEM Papers. Read paper
  2. Keating, M.G. (2026). "Governor: The Sustainable Execution Constraint." Stealth Labz CEM Papers. Read paper
  3. Keating, M.G. (2026). "Drift Tax: The Measurable Cost of AI-Assisted Errors." Stealth Labz CEM Papers. Read paper