Preparing your business management data before you move to a new ERP system is crucial for ensuring a smooth transition. In this blog, we take a look at the steps every business needs to take in order to ensure a successful ERP data migration process.
Key steps for ERP data migration
There are ten key steps for a successful ERP data migration process:
1. Assess your data
It is important that you conduct a comprehensive inventory of all the data that needs to migrated. This should include master data, transactional data and historical data. You need to access the quality, completeness and relevance of the data to determine what needs to be migrated, and what can be archived or discarded.
2. Map your data
Map out the data structure and relationships between different data entities in your legacy system and your new ERP. This process will include identifying equivalent fields, data formats and what data transformations will be required for migration.
3. Cleanse and standardise your data
Data cleansing can be a time-consuming activity, but it is also a vital one. It is important to remove duplicates, correct errors and standardise formats. Data cleansing tasks include removing extra spaces, fixing spelling mistakes, removing rogue characters, and ensuring consistency in data entry. Standardising data format and units of measure will ensure uniformity across the new system.
4. Transform your data (when you need to)
Your data mapping exercise will have identified some data types and structures that will need to be transformed to meet the requirements of your new ERP system. Data transformation activities include converting data types, restructuring data and aligning data values with the new system’s standards and conventions.
5. Validate your data
Once the data is cleansed, standardised and transformed (if required), it is vitally important that you validate it to ensure its accuracy, completeness and consistency. Run integrity checks, and use validation runs and data profiling techniques to help you identify any discrepancies or anomalies in the data. You can then address any data quality issues before proceeding with the actual migration process.
6. Plan out your data migration process
It is important to have a robust data migration strategy and plan that outlines the migration approach, timelines, resources and dependencies. Define migration priorities, sequences and rollback procedures to mitigate risks and ensure controlled process.
7. Test your data migration process
Thorough testing is vital at this stage. It will allow you to validate the effectiveness of the migration process and identify any issues or errors. Many companies conduct trial migrations and dry or parallel runs to assess the performance and reliability of the migration process.
8. Train your end users
You need to prepare your end-users for the transition to the new ERP. This means not only training them on the new system, but also communicating the benefits of the migration and addressing any concerns they may have about the move to a new business management system. An effective change management plan is a key ingredient for ensuring a smooth transition and minimising disruption to business operations.
9. Hope for the best (but plan for the worst)
No matter how well-planned your data migration process, it is foolhardy not to plan for the worst-case scenario. Make sure that you create backups of the data to be migrated and establish contingency plans, including rollback procedures, to address any unforeseen issues or data loss.
10. Validate your data migration process
Once the data is migrated to your new ERP, you definitely need to test the data again. Conduct post-migration audits and performance evaluations to identify any areas of optimisation or improvement. You should also continue to monitor data quality and system performance to maintain the integrity and reliability of your new ERP.
ERP data migration tips from the experts
Data migration is an essential element of any ERP implementation process. There is lots of advice availabale online on what you need to do to ensure your ERP data migration process is a success. Here are few “golden” tips we picked up while researching this blog:
- Make sure you know exactly what data you need to migrate – it won’t be everything!
- During the post-migration testing phase, you must double (and probably triple) check the key Customer, Item and Vendor data categories and fields as well as key Balances in your transactional data.
- If there are any changes to data naming conventions, be sure that your user team understands these properly.
- Any user acceptance testing (UAT) activities should also include data accuracy checking.
Find out how Bevica can help your business
Bevica is the business management (ERP) software solution specially created for the alcoholic drinks industry. With best practice tools and features to manage all areas and functions of your business, you can immediately have an overview of your business from a single platform. All of the different Bevica installation options (excluding start-up) include data migration assistance, including a data setup checklist, predefined core data information and predefined Excel template configuration packages.
To find out more about Bevica and how it could help modernise and improve your business processes and productivity, book a demo with one of our expert team today.
