2011-07-01
There are many reasons why migrating your data to another application will be one the hardest projects you will ever undertake.
It’s a little like trying to fit square pegs into round holes – it’s just never going to be simple. DataConsulting offers a number of services to make life easier.
Migration planning
Planning is fundamentally the most important step in any data migration. Without proper consideration it will seriously impede progress – and at its worst, lead to failure.
Evidence suggests that 80% of migrations fail to meet expectations, 40% experience budget overruns and 70% aren’t delivered in time. DataConsulting has experience in helping clients create a robust plan for a data migration.
Migration execution
Migration execution encompasses all other aspects of data migration – every one of which is key to the successful outcome of the migration. We can help you with:
- data mapping – mapping from the source systems to target systems;
- transformations – does the data need transforming from one system to the next?;
- cleansing – can data be piped through directly or is there an element of cleansing and/or archiving required? Holes in the data may need to be plugged in order to migrate the relevant records;
- building the execution steps – the migration routines will have to be designed and built;
- working with users to ensure that the process is inclusive – important and often overlooked;
- testing – volume testing, system testing and user testing will need to be completed to ensure that the migration routines run in a timely fashion and run as intended completely and accurately; and
- measuring success – how will you know whether all your information has been migrated successfully? You’ll need reports that give you the assurance you need to give the green light to the business.
Health check
DataConsulting can look at any aspect of your data migration and benchmark it against good practice.
Questions to consider:
- Do you suspect an employee of abusing the expenses system?
- Do you lack confidence in your vendor master data?
- Do you suspect payments are being made twice?
If the answers are yes, DataConsulting can help – contact us for an informal discussion or complete our enquiry form.
