Implementing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can help your organization streamline operations and business processes, enhancing your efficiency in the long term. However, this directly depends on a successful implementation of the new ERP system.
One of the crucial factors that can make or break your ERP project is the data migration process. Migrating data from your legacy systems, such as paper-based systems and spreadsheets, to a new ERP solution is not a simple task. This process requires careful planning and paying attention to details—even minor ones—to guarantee data integrity and minimize disruptions to your business processes.
This article will deliver an ERP Data Migration Checklist to help ensure a successful data migration process and avoid data migration challenges.
Data Migration Best Practices
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The ERP Data Migration Checklist
1. Establish a Dedicated Migration Team
Establishing a team of dedicated experts to oversee your data migration project should be at the top of your priority list. Members from your different departments—such as IT, finance, operations and supply chain—must be included in your data migration team. This is crucial because they understand the unique challenges and pain points in their departments, and they understand what each dataset represents—including historical data, transactional data and master data—and how it’s used.
The core responsibilities of your data migration team are to plan, execute and monitor the data migration process. The team is also responsible for keeping the project on track and ensuring all stakeholders are aligned with the project.
2. Develop a Comprehensive Migration Plan
Another must-have item on your checklist is a comprehensive data migration plan. This plan plays a big role in ensuring the success of your data migration project and it outlines:
- The specific steps involved in the migration process—such as data extraction, transformation, loading and validation
- The scope and goals of the migration
- The timeline and budget for the process
- The resources and roles of different experts involved in the project
- The rollback plan in case things don’t go as planned
During the preparation of the ERP migration plan, all key stakeholders must be involved, as they play a crucial role in communicating the plan to their teams. They ensure that everyone in your organization understands the impact of the upcoming changes. Be sure to involve your implementation partner for input into any deadlines or formatting requirements for data preparation.
3. Define the Scope and Objectives
Another crucial aspect of your ERP data migration checklist is clearly defining the scope and objectives of the process. When defining the scope and objectives:
- Identify the specific data sets that need to be migrated
- Determine the target ERP modules and functionalities
- Establish a timeline for the migration process
Defining the scope and objectives for the process can help your stakeholders stay on track and provide your ERP data migration team a road map to follow.
4. Analyze and Clean Your Data
The accuracy and the ability of your ERP system to deliver on the promised benefits depends on the accuracy of the data migrated to the system. The data cleansing step helps guarantee that the data being migrated is clean and free from error. During the analysis and data cleaning phase:
- Identify and remove duplicates from your data
- Fix any inconsistencies in the data
- Ensure that the data is accurate and up-to-date
Your ERP implementation team should work with your business process owners during data validation and cleansing and address any discrepancies identified before migrating the data. This step must be included to ensure that any errors and outdated data are not carried to the new ERP software and that data integrity is maintained.
“ERP data migration is not a management project, it’s also not an IT project. It is an enterprise project, and everyone is involved, whether they are a user or not. Let everyone know why the business is migrating to a new ERP system and what the expectations for the business are.”
5. Map Data to the New ERP System
Data mapping is essential in ensuring that the data on your legacy systems corresponds to the fields in your new ERP system. This involves:
- Identifying the appropriate fields, tables and relationships within the ERP database
- Determining how your existing data will fit into the data structure of the ERP system
Mapping your data helps prevent confusion, data inconsistencies and missing information in the new system.
6. Perform a Test Migration
A test migration in a controlled environment is a must have item on your ERP data migration checklist. A test migration allows your team to:
- Identify and fix issues
- Refine the migration strategy
- Validate the migration process
The testing should involve sample data that covers all the key functionalities and workflows of the new ERP system. The test plan helps minimize the risk of disruptions to your business operations and processes and promote a smooth transition to the new ERP system.
7. Execute the Data Migration
Once you have completed the testing phase and verified that everything is working as expected, you can commence the actual data migration process from the old system to the new. This involves:
- Extracting relevant data from your legacy systems
- Transforming the data into the appropriate format and structure supported by the new ERP system
- Loading the transformed data into the designated fields and tables within the new ERP platform
Communication between your stakeholders and data migration team is critical during this stage. The process must be closely monitored, and progress tracked to ensure that there are no issues or missing information in the data.
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8. Validate and Reconcile Migrated Data
Once you complete your data transfer to the new ERP software, it must be validated and verified to ensure that it’s accurate and free from errors and that there are no information gaps. The validation and reconciliation phase is where you can verify all these aspects, and involves conducting:
- Data quality checks to verify the accuracy and completeness of the data
- Data consistency checks to verify the consistency of the data with external systems—such as CRM and financials systems—and the ERP system itself
- Business user involvement to check on the relevance and functionality of the migrated data in their departments
- Reconciliation and error resolution to ensure that any data issues are dealt with
Any issues that are identified in this stage should be dealt with immediately. Leaving the issues unresolved may cripple the ability of your new ERP system to deliver on the promised benefits and ROI.
9. Train Users on the New ERP System
When end users are not well trained, they may resist the ERP solution and stick to the ‘traditional ways’ of doing their jobs. User training helps your employees understand the different modules and functionalities of the ERP system. ERP end-user training must cover the following key areas:
- System navigation, which enables the end users to navigate the ERP system interface, locate essential functions and utilize menus and search bars to find the information they need
- Core functionality, which enables the end users to understand the core functionalities relevant to their roles
- Business process changes, which enables the end users to understand the process changes caused by the implementation of the new ERP system
- Data entry and reporting, which enables the end users to understand the proper data entry procedures to ensure accuracy and consistency within the system
- Troubleshooting and support, which enables the end users to understand how to deal with any issues that they may come across while using the new ERP system
Training should be tailored to meet the unique demands of your different departments and employee roles.
10. Perform Post-Migration Monitoring and Support
The go-live stage is not the end of your data migration journey. Continuously conducting post-migration monitoring is necessary in guaranteeing a smooth transition to the new ERP system. With the help of your ERP data migration team, closely monitor the system’s performance, data integrity and user adoption rates after the migration is complete.
Whenever any issues are identified, they should be addressed immediately. Continuously optimizing and upgrading your new ERP system is essential in ensuring the system can meet your changing data and business needs.
Conclusion
For manufacturers and distributors looking to utilize the power of ERP solutions to modernize operations and stay competitive, a successful ERP data migration strategy is crucial. The accuracy, completeness and quality of the data migrated to your new ERP system determines the effectiveness of your ERP system in delivering insights that can help make critical business decisions. Having a data migration checklist is essential in ensuring that the data transferred to your new system is complete, error-free and has no missing information.
Ultra Consultants is here to help your organization throughout your ERP implementation journey—including the crucial data migration process. We have worked with hundreds of manufacturers and distributors, helping companies like yours realize their technology goals. We work with your team to optimize your business processes, employ a structured approach to reduce your risk and costs and utilize leading enterprise technologies to drive improved performance. For more information and additional resources on how to bring our expertise right to your doorstep, request your free discovery call today.
