ERP Data Migration Best Practices in 6 Steps

If your business is planning to upgrade to a more modern business management solution or enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, transferring your data accurately is essential. Typically, it requires moving data from different systems, formats, and storage types into a unified and standardized structure.

While this process may appear intimidating, with proper planning and execution with an experienced vendor, your data migration can be done seamlessly and successfully. Carefully planned data migration can help you:

• Keep the entire ERP implementation project on schedule and within budget
• Identify and eliminate outdated and redundant data in your legacy systems.

So how do you get started? Use our 6-step strategy for migrating data that addresses challenges including cost, stakeholder buy-in, and data integrity:

Data migration best practices step 1: Choose your ERP vendor

Selecting the right ERP vendor is crucial to the success of a data migration process, and it involves careful consideration of various factors. First, evaluate each vendor's experience and expertise in data migration, including their ability to handle the specific data types and volumes that your organization requires. Then, assess each vendor's compatibility with your current IT infrastructure and future technology goals. Critical factors to consider include the vendor's implementation methodology, support services, and scalability. Verify the vendor's reputation by talking with existing customers and getting proof of a track record of successful implementations. Talk with your own leaders, employees, and stakeholders about their prior experiences with each vendor, and their solutions.

Once you narrow your ERP candidates to 2-4 contenders, interview them to learn how they will clean and de-duplicate data and then migrate it to your new solution. Ask them what the timeline is and what is involved. Ask them about times when previous clients have had unclean data and how they worked around challenges with data migration. Get a sense of how long the process will take and what internal resources will need to be committed to ensure it goes smoothly.

Data migration best practices step 2: Determine the data sources

In this phase, have your internal data migration team work with all key stakeholders in your organization to identify key data sources such as on-site servers, external drives, or previous cloud-based business software systems. Include essential master data, historical, and transactional data, making your selections based on accuracy and value. Discard redundant and outdated data at this stage, which will save time and money in the next phases.

Data migration best practices step 3: Map the data

Your vendor partner will work with you to map your data to the ERP database structure before importing it. During data mapping, compare source data and fields to ERP target data and make sure they are in alignment before proceeding.

Data migration best practices step 4: Migrate the data

Now you are ready to extract data from the source system, transform it into a suitable format, and load it into your new ERP system. This phase requires careful planning and execution to ensure that data is migrated accurately and completely without causing any disruption to your business' operations. Your vendor should work closely with your data migration team throughout the entire data migration process but especially during this phase.

Data migration best practices step 5: Validate for completion and accuracy

This critical step involves verifying that your data has been correctly migrated and is complete and accurate in your new ERP system. Check for completeness and accuracy by comparing the migrated data with the source data to ensure that all data has been migrated, and there are no inconsistencies or errors.

Data migration best practices step 6: Test for full integration

In this final step, test your migrated data to ensure that your new ERP solution is functioning as expected. This phase involves a series of tests to confirm that the migrated data is integrated with the new system and performs correctly with all system modules. Cover all aspects of the new system, including functional, performance, and security aspects. Once you are finished testing, work with your vendor to resolve any issues.

Now your new ERP solution is ready for deployment!

DID YOU KNOW?

For most end users, ERP systems fall short on data accuracy, user experience, and analytics. Don’t let this happen to you. Choose a vendor with a track record of success in your industry and a hands-on approach to data migration and ERP implementation.

Interested in this topic? Get more of your ERP questions answered in our recent FAQs post, or try these other posts:

• An Interview with ChatGPT on the Future of ERP, Business Software, AI, and Itself
• Six ERP Basics Your Business Can’t Do Without
• 5 Ways Enterprise Resource Planning Can Improve Your Customer Experience