From Pendo Sprawl to a Governed Activation Plan

GlobalVetLink operates a veterinary compliance platform where vets sign up, validate licenses, create and sign certificates (CVI, EIA, VFD, and others), and bill monthly per signed certificate. Product, marketing, and customer success all need one trustworthy view of activation, not three conflicting counts of the same behavior.

Three instruments, one journey"

Track Events, Pages, and Features often counted the same step differently

Fragmented funnels"

No single line item matched a clean activation or drop-off step

Lifecycle friction"

HubSpot segments and campaigns need stable event names and fewer sources

Challenge

Instrumentation had outgrown the product

Where do vets stall between sign-up, license validation, certificate signing, and billing?

A Pendo audit found the same user journeys counted across three parallel mechanisms with little alignment to agreed customer milestones. Funnels fragmented, dashboards disagreed, and SSOT milestones like Profile Completed, Payment Added, and Certificate Signed were often missing as named Track Events, spread instead across hundreds of proxies.

Solution

Journey map, tracking plan, audit, and funnel preview

In a FigJam working session with GlobalVetLink product leadership, Brainforge aligned on customer milestones that match how the platform ships value: sign up, submit and validate license, complete a signed certificate, and reach billing-related activity, with certificate type carried as event properties instead of parallel event paths.

Brainforge translated that model into a concrete event tracking plan, compared it to live Pendo exports, and produced a prioritized cleanup list: merge duplicate Pages, remove redundant Track Events, backfill server milestones, and prune zero-traffic Features. A primary-workflow funnel view in Pendo let stakeholders preview activation reporting before locking implementation and tool decisions.

The core pain was taxonomy and instrumentation quality, not whether Pendo can do analytics. The team received a tool recommendation one-pager with an honest stay-on-Pendo cleanup path or a pilot/switch option, plus HubSpot framing so instrumentation notes stay aligned with the automation roadmap.

Results

Workstream 1 deliverables leadership can sign off on

Brainforge delivered a draft event tracking plan, Pendo implementation audit with a prioritized trim list, a primary-workflow funnel preview, and an honest tool recommendation, giving GlobalVetLink a path to one governed instrument per milestone and activation reporting that answers drop-off by stage.

68

Track Events audited

76

Pages with overlap

256

Features in taxonomy

Impact

A blueprint for trustworthy activation reporting

The design sprint turned messy Pendo milestone tracking into a governed product analytics plan. Leadership can now review a funnel shape, align on customer milestones, and decide whether to stay on Pendo with a bounded cleanup program or pilot an alternative with migration notes before investing in implementation.

SSOT event tracking plan

FigJam agreement translated into concrete events, properties, and KPI inputs

Pendo audit + trim list

P0–P2 violations prioritized so reporting stops double-counting journeys

Tool path forward

Stay-and-clean vs pilot/switch framing with HubSpot lifecycle implications

Tools used

Brainforge used FigJam for milestone alignment, Pendo for audit and funnel preview, and HubSpot framing for lifecycle automation, without expanding implementation scope in the design sprint.

Pendo

FigJam

At a glance

Client

GlobalVetLink

Function

Product Analytics & MarTech

Project Type

Product Analytics Design Sprint

Project Duration

Workstream 1

Context

A multi-certificate platform needs one activation story