Why Enterprise Buyers Want a Data Lineage Audit

Episode notes

Episode 61 of B2B SaaS Talks with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna dig into the newest procurement demand: a full data lineage audit before deal close. They walk through a real mid-market SaaS deal that stalled for three months because the vendor couldn't trace where customer data flowed - from ingestion to storage to third-party sub-processors. Lucas pulls a stat from a Gartner survey that 43 percent of enterprise buyers now require lineage documentation in RFPs, up from 11 percent in 2022. Luna pushes back on whether this is just an enterprise tax on startups versus genuine risk management. They cover the three common audit tiers buyers are asking for - infrastructure, application, and data pipeline - and why SOC 2 Type II reports alone aren't cutting it anymore. The hosts debate whether vendors should build lineage as a compliance checkbox or as a competitive differentiator. The conversation ends with a tactical tip: the fastest way to get audit-ready is to map data flows the day a deal enters stage two. No doom-scrolling - just the practical playbook for a shift that's reshaping enterprise software procurement.

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