Moving from a legacy system to a new cloud based system poses many challenges, but the most important one is moving the data over from the old to the new system.
This can be viewed as an opportunity to clean up and rationalise your data, simplifying it and cleaning it, as well as consolidating various disparate systems into one, making the data more useable.
It can also be viewed as a complete disaster which will bring the very business to its knees if not done correctly and with a high degree of intelligence. Let me say that any data migration is full of risks and problems and invariably some data will be lost or corrupted unless all steps are taken to minimise the risks involved from the start.
It is also fair to say that most projects dealing with data migration experience cost and timeframe overruns, causing a delay in deployment, usually due to over optimistic and unrealistic deadlines or constraints’ being agreed before proper analysis has been carried out of the current state of the data.
At Pulse Business Software, we are engaged in doing very large, complex data migrations and it is through bitter experience we have mastered how to migrate data correctly and minimise risks to our clients in the process.
Here are a few of our top tips to help you migrate your data:
Understand what the business is trying to achieve – is it consolidation of data, deploying new systems, merging data etc. What are the measures of success and how will you inform people of the progress made and by when.
Define the project scope – Who is doing what, by when and how. Define what tasks need to be performed, the tools you are going to use and the outcomes. Outlining the migration methodology you will use in the migration process is vital, with most it will be ETL (Exact, transform and load) but it could be hand coding and replication etc.
Define the skills required – whilst you know your data well, do you have the team and skills to do this internally? Data manipulation is skilled and time consuming work so employing external specialists may be the best option. Don’t forget you still have your day job to perform as well.
Understand your current data structure – What state is your current data in? How many systems are you consolidating and which is the most correct one (you would be amazed at the data inaccuracy). If you do not spend sufficient time in data profiling, your data migration will not be successful. Data quality is the most important part of the whole project so it must carry the biggest proportion of your effort.
Outline and define your process – make sure everybody know what and how you are going to do the migration. Are you going for a big bang approach or will it be a gradual migration of key systems first. Will you be running the old system in parallel to ensure data integrity and user confidence? When will there be downtime?
Management of data – Making sure you data is managed properly moving forward is also vital. A data migration is an ideal opportunity to get all legacy data correct and to ensure future data is improved.
Define policies for your data – Again, a new broom sweeps clean so make sure you define your policies and procedures for any data. How will you add , amend and delete records, who can or cannot do this, define data retention policies and storage for redundant data etc. These policies must be visible and enforceable.
Define testing and acceptance criteria – There are 3 important and vital steps to take here: Test, Test and Test again! Define the test criteria and acceptance criteria (ie when it is fine to go live etc). If you do not test at every stage, your migration will fail. Confidence in the data must be your prime objective as it is so vital to the business and success of the project.
Define the end of the project – have all objectives been met, it there a clear audit trail for compliance etc.
Project Closure – As things start to draw to a close, it is important that you step back and look at what has happened over the project, the good the bad and the ugly. It is important to gain feedback from the staff working on the project, the users and management. A lessons Learnt log is invaluable as doubtless this will not be your last data migration project!
With businesses having to deploy systems which increase productivity and reduce costs, staying with your old systems may not be an option for much longer and eventually you will have to change systems, so why not go with the experts in providing Cloud Based Business Solutions – Pulse Business Software.
Contact us now to see how we can help you through your data migration problem.
