Do you remember how stressful it was the last time you moved from one home to another? The move itself might be good, but physically moving all your possessions is stressful and challenging.
An ERP migration can be just as challenging.
In the chaos of the move, your data could get misplaced, damaged, or left behind. Especially if your data is already dirty, full of duplications and lacking standardization. Just as you wouldn’t want to arrive at your new home only to find that half your belongings are missing or broken, you don’t want to complete an ERP migration with incomplete, inaccurate, or corrupted data.
So, the question becomes, “How can I ensure high-quality, accurate data is put into my new ERP?”
The answer: data reliability.
Data reliability ensures data is consistently accurate, usable, and trustworthy for various applications, by technical and non-technical users to make informed business decisions. It consists of data unification, data quality, and data health. When your data is reliable, it can be transferred accurately and will be ready for the advanced functionalities of a modern ERP system.
But unfortunately, many companies don’t start with reliable or accurate data.
The Data Migration Challenge
Many businesses make the critical mistake of moving their existing data into the new ERP system without any cleaning or validation, often relying on Excel spreadsheets to manage the transition. This approach inevitably leads to poor and inaccurate data in the new system resulting in reduced investment value, loss of trust in the ERP data, and unreliable decision making.
Using an ERP migration consultant can help navigate the technical aspects of the transition, but their services often don’t address this problem. Which often leaves the task of data cleanup – if it happens at all – to the business itself through manual spreadsheets by employees who already have a full-time job and don’t understand the intricacies involved in data quality.
This method is inefficient and prone to errors.
And what’s worse, after all that work, data quality initiatives are often discarded after the migration is complete. This means that new data entering the system post-migration is not subjected to the same rigorous standards, leading to a gradual decline in data quality over time.
Investing in an ERP system without ensuring data reliability is like buying a high-performance car but never changing the oil – eventually, it will break down. Without reliable data, the benefits of the ERP system are significantly diminished, and unfortunately, often leads to a wasted investment.
5 Steps for a Successful ERP Data Migration
Achieving a successful ERP data migration requires a comprehensive approach that ensures data reliability from start to finish. Here are key steps to follow:
Step 1: Planning and Assessment
The first step is to thoroughly assess the current state of your data. This involves conducting an audit to identify data quality issues such as inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and missing information. Understanding the health of your data upfront allows you to create a roadmap for the migration process, ensuring that potential problems are addressed before they become major obstacles.
Step 2: Data Cleaning and Validation
Once you have a clear picture of your data’s health, the next step is cleaning and validating the data. This process involves correcting errors, removing duplicates, and ensuring that all data entries are accurate and up to date. Data validation is crucial to ensure that only high-quality data is migrated to the new ERP system. This step may require sophisticated tools and methodologies to achieve the desired level of accuracy.
Step 3: Data Mapping and Transformation
Data mapping involves defining how data fields from the old system will be translated into the new ERP system. This step ensures that data is correctly formatted and compatible with the new system’s requirements. Transformation processes might be necessary to convert data into the appropriate formats and structures.
Step 4: Migration Execution
With the data cleaned, validated, and mapped, it’s time to execute the migration. This phase involves transferring data from the old system to the new ERP system. The best way to do this is with a well-defined migration plan, including testing phases, to verify that the data is accurately transferred and functions correctly within the new system.
Step 5: Post-Migration Monitoring
The migration process doesn’t end once the data is transferred. Continuous monitoring and data governance is crucial to ensure that the data remains reliable and that the new system functions as expected. Post-migration monitoring involves regularly checking data quality, identifying and resolving any emerging issues, and making adjustments as necessary to maintain data integrity. It also involves controlling who enters data into the new system so you can maintain the high quality of your data.
Keep Help Top of Mind
Microsoft ERP data migration is a complex process that requires a high level of expertise.
Using a data consultant is a lot like hiring movers when going to a new home. They take care of the heavy lifting so you can sit back and run business as normal. At Datagence, we specialize in data reliability and ERP migrations. If you need help migrating your data, let’s chat!
