Before Helium, a typical £2M revenue e-commerce operation runs on a fragile stack: Google Sheets for product data, Linnworks for inventory, Xero for accounting, ShipStation for shipping, and email for everything else. Every order touches at least 3 systems, and reconciliation is a Friday afternoon ritual.
The migration usually happens over a weekend. Friday afternoon: export product catalogue and customer data. Saturday morning: import into Helium, map fields, and validate. Saturday afternoon: connect marketplace channels and verify stock sync. Sunday: run a parallel test with live orders, comparing Helium's output against the old system.
The biggest surprise for most businesses isn't the feature set — it's the time savings. When your inventory, orders, accounting, and shipping all live in one system, you eliminate the reconciliation entirely. The Friday afternoon ritual disappears. And because Helium includes manufacturing, B2B, compliance, and analytics that your old stack couldn't provide, you gain capabilities you didn't even know you needed.