Why You Should Follow Best Practices for Data Migration

When information is one of the most valuable assets a company owns, information management becomes a critical business activity. The domain of information management includes disciplines such as data availability, storage, protection, maintenance, regulatory and policy compliance, and data migration. Today, we discuss why you should follow best practices for data migration.

As companies upgrade and/or replace their ERP and other business management systems, it is clear they want to migrate data to the new solutions. In the case of an ERP implementation, which is generally a complex project with myriad moving parts and dependencies, data migration from legacy systems quickly becomes complicated and challenging. That complexity increases when it concerns multiple entities in an international environment. Data from several sources, multiple legacy systems with limited import and export capabilities, multiple lines of business, and stages in the company’s history may come in different, even obsolete formats; display various degrees of integrity; or present distinct requirements for access and protection.

How do companies approach data migration?

Some companies follow an unstructured approach to data migration. The technical team hand-codes migrations using only Microsoft Excel and.CSV files, manually. Others use data migration solutions to simplify the process and minimize the risk and cost of migration projects. In recent years, more and more companies perform data migration following a project-oriented approach, based on best practices.

Bloor Research has charted out best practices for data migration. They recommend that companies ensure high data quality by using automated tools to perform data profiling and cleansing before undertaking a migration. They suggest using a proven data migration tool with a sound methodology instead of hand-coding migrations for speed and efficiency. Businesses should plan data migration as a distinct, separately resourced project that is not simply a component of an implementation. Business stakeholders, not just technical experts, need to be involved in planning and testing the migration and validating its alignment with their goals.

Where should you start?

I recommend, go for Business Integration Solutions that enable organizations to follow best practices that lead to more successful data migrations. An apt solution would have the needs of both business and technical users embedded in it. Ensure that within a business process-oriented framework, the solution provides a huge array of data migration capabilities and accommodates a great variety of data formats and sources. The solution should be able to facilitate specific complex migrations without the need for extensive custom coding. It provides powerful modeling and scripting resources to speed multiple migrations with best-practice configurations within internationally active companies. The solution you go for must contribute to a lower cost of ownership for your ERP systems.

Learn how To-Increase’s Data Migration Studio reduces the risk and increases the predictability of data migrations.