A B2B data security platform
Reduced customer onboarding time to just 10.2 days (earlier 180 days) without increasing CAC and scaled trust through design-product thinking
One-pager for your quick glance
Reva Security, a B2B data protection platform built on AES-256-bit encryption, had a 180-day sales-led acquisition cycle involving 6 internal teams and 17 customer touchpoints.
CONSTRAINTS
- •No offshore or paid research budget for U.S. customers.
- •On-prem systems and GDPR/PII compliance restricted access to real usage data.
- •Complex, semi-offline workflows with heavy dependencies on field engineers.
DECISION LOGS
- •Adopted a 10-minute, 5-step self-guided onboarding funnel (Sign-up → Upload → Guided Success → Explore → Upgrade).
- •Simplified copy to 8th-grade English with confidence cues.
- •Ran 3 usability loops with 24 participants to validate flow comprehension and upgrade triggers.
BETS
- •Build a digital self-serve trial targeting SMEs (accounted for 62% of total customers)
- •Focus on HR administrators handling employee and compliance data (high need, low tech, high trust-sensitivity)
- •Reduce customer onboarding time from 90 days to < 30 days while keeping CAC the same
RESULT: A 24% YoY projected revenue lift and a repeatable low-touch funnel that became a key proof point during Reva's acquisition by Fortra.
Overview
Technology
AES-256-bit military grade encryption
Funded by
Acquired for $13.9M by Fortra
USP
Protect sensitive files wherever they travelled (even when offline)
Work culture
Engineering-first mindset (3 Designers among 70+ engineers). Product worked directly with tech, design was brought in late to 'make it look good'
Success
In six months, we changed that narrative - turning design into a strategic function that reduced customer onboarding time from 90 days to just 10 days for small and medium enterprises, without increasing CAC.
Constraints & challenges
Reva's ecosystem was complex - one customer could involve six internal teams and six distinct user types. Every workflow was burdened with compliance, security, and cross-department dependencies.
Customer acquisition timelines stretched up to 180 days, with upto 17 touch-points before closure. Each deal required heavy sales involvement, and design & product had minimal influence early on.
Challenge
Build a digital-first, self-serve onboarding funnel that reduces sales dependency, shortens the decision cycle from 90+ to < 30 days, and keeps CAC at zero.
Study & Insights
Began by shadowing the people who actually sold and implemented Reva. Over 3 weeks of generative research
- • Shadowed 12 sales calls & 10 onboarding sessions
- • Conducted 10 moderated in-depth interviews
- • Studied 32 hrs. of live observation + 7 hrs. recorded
Primary focus
HR and Compliance Heads accounted for nearly 38% of all inbound demo requests - yet they consistently reported low technical confidence during onboarding.
That became our first red flag: the product's learning curve was creating friction exactly where conversions could have been easiest.
Direct Administrator
Responsible for configuration, upkeep & reliable operation of computer systems, servers, and data security systems
Gender
Male
Age
38 years old
Lifestyle
Suburban
Marital status
Married
Education
Bachelors + Security certs
Skills
- • Technical proficiency in all major OS
- • Flexible on rotational-skills work environment
- • Problem resolving expertise
- • Estimating, scheduling & managing project networks
DILO
- • Setup & manage servers, network equipments & IT infra
- • Maintain, repair, upgrade OS, and hardware
- • Ensure IT structure is up to date
- • Carry out daily configurations + monitor
Goals
- • Increase productivity
- • Reduce support calls
- • Support cutting down IT costs initiatives
Frustrations
- • Finding ideal solution for right cost
- • End users don't use the new/updated software in the intended way
- • Deploy and implement new software across all hierarchies of organisation
38%
Inbound demo requests came from HR/Compliance Heads
72%
Users dropped off before completing a full demo
$430
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) per lead in per sales effort
64%
Confused "always-on encryption" with antivirus/ firewall solutions.
Journey map
Perceive > Consider > Instigate (Pre & Post) > Learn > Onboard > Regularise > Conclude
The findings pointed to one clear opportunity: "Can we help non-technical buyers experience the feeling of security - without involving the sales team?" So we segmented our audience by technical depth rather than organizational role, and noticed a pattern. HR administrators handled some of the most sensitive datasets - employee records, payroll, health information - yet they were the least tech-savvy and most risk-averse.
- •User comprehension: 70% struggled with technical language ("AES-256", "cloud/on-prem"), showing a need for simplified UX writing.
- •Trust levers: 3 out of 4 buyers who completed a full demo rated "visible encryption feedback" as a strong trust factor.
- •Self-serve appetite: 55% of SME leads expressed interest in a "try-it-yourself" version - if setup required less than 10 minutes.
Study & Insights
Reframed the goal from selling security to scaling trust
Hypothesis:
If SMEs can experience Reba securely on their own, their decision time will reduce by at least 60% while keeping CAC = 0.
We also decided not to chase all industries at once. SMEs (₹10 – 50 Cr turnover, 25 – 50 devices) made up 62 % of our total leads and had the fastest internal approval cycles.
Design approach and decisions logs
We used a hybrid of Lean UX + DATDSDL (Discover, Analyse, Template, Detailed, Summative testing, Dev hand-off, Learn) and a proprietary Concept-Structure-Detailed loop. The idea was simple: solve the right problem before solving it beautifully.
A. FRAMING FUNNEL
- •Sign-up → 2 min
- •File upload (simulated encryption) → 2 min
- •Guided success screen (+trust cue) → 1 min
- •Feature exploration (limited menu) → 5 min
- •Upgrade prompt (CTA) → < 1 min
A full trial experience now took under 10 minutes, with no engineer required.
B. DESIGN & WRITING PRINCIPLES
8th-grade English
All microcopy rewritten for comprehension (Flesch Reading Ease > 70).
Guided tours
Interactive hotspots instead of video tutorials
Trust cues
Visual "encryption in progress / complete" states to make security tangible.
*Consistency with main design system: reused existing colour tokens, typography, and components to ensure dev parity.
C. VALIDATION & ITERATION
We ran three rapid usability loops with 24 participants (mix of HR, IT, and legal users).
Impact
6 months after rollout, we had numbers worth celebrating - and defending
By the 4th month
10.2 days
Average decision cycle
70% self serve
Activation rate
Zero
CAC
• And the sales team finally had time to chase enterprise deals instead of hand-holding SMEs.
• Internally, this became a case study in how UX + product + business alignment can shift company economics. Externally, it positioned Reva as a scalable SaaS model - a factor that strengthened its valuation and later helped close the acquisition by Fortra.
Learnings
Focus beats scale in complex B2B.
When everyone sells "full-stack security," owning one clear slice (HR data security) made us visible and defensible.
Language drives trust:
Simplifying encryption jargon into human terms improved comprehension by +29 points and conversion by +3.4 %.
Evaluate fast, explore faster:
We depended too long on evaluative metrics; our breakthrough came when we mixed exploratory shadowing with lean validation.
Process over perfection:
Three design iterations in 60 days outperformed six months of pixel-perfect screens.
Design as a business catalyst:
In engineering-heavy orgs, the designer's job isn't to beautify - it's to quantify.
"What if this screen saved 60 sales hours?" became our default question.
Closing reflection
What started as an under-resourced experiment became a proof of concept that design could cut onboarding time by 88 % and bring customer acquisition cost to zero.
It changed how Reva saw design's role - from "make it look good" to "make it make money." And that mindset, I think, is what truly scaled - not just the product.
Tulip
Achieved 28% more revenue and 12% more customer base in 5 months using innovative storytelling and pricing models
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