Your company is growing. Technology is rapidly advancing. It’s an exciting time to upgrade and improve your business operations. While ERP migration – the process of transferring your current data, customization, and configurations from one platform to another – can feel daunting, don’t delay. The sooner you make the move, the faster your company can adapt and grow.
In this article, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about what is ERP migration, why companies migrate data, and ERP migration best practices.
What Is ERP Migration?
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) migration describes the process of moving a business’s ERP system from one platform to another.
ERP systems are software solutions that help organizations streamline most or all parts of their operations. Modules you can integrate with your ERP system include finance and accounting, human resources, inventory management, warehouse management, supply chain, manufacturing, and more.
ERP systems assist with the smooth functioning of an organization, and migrating them can be as complex and challenging of a task as an initial ERP implementation. However, with the help of a highly qualified ERP consulting firm, ERP data migration can be a painless process.
4 Reasons for ERP Migration
ERP migrations can happen for all sorts of reasons, but the most common are upgrades, change of platforms or software, moving data to a centralized location, or further customization and configuration of the current ERP system. Let’s get into it.
1. ERP Upgrade
The most common type of ERP migration is an ERP system upgrade. Upgrading your ERP system involves moving from an older version of your ERP system to a newer one. Businesses upgrade their systems to take advantage of new features, improve performance, or enhance security.
2. ERP Platform or Software Migration
A platform migration involves moving the ERP system from one platform to another. For example, many businesses are now migrating from an on-premises ERP system to a cloud-based ERP solution.
A software migration means moving from one ERP system to another. For example, some businesses chose a tier-one ERP system when they were small. They found that their chosen ERP software couldn’t scale with them. In that case, they select a more robust ERP system and migrate their data from their legacy system to their new system.
3. ERP Data Migration
Data migration is a critical part of any ERP migration. It can happen for any reason, whether you want to move all data into a centralized location, you’re changing platforms or software, or you’re backing up data for the future. Data migration usually requires collaboration between your ERP consultant and IT department to ensure data integrity, completeness, and accuracy.
4. Customization and Configuration Migration
One of the most beautiful aspects of ERP systems is their ability to be customized and configured to your business’s unique needs. If you’re upgrading your system or changing platforms or software, you can migrate your customizations and configurations or create new ones.
13 ERP Data Migration Best Practices
Your staff makes their best decisions based on accurate, real-time data. Follow these best practices to ensure your data stays clean.
1. Profile and Cleanse Current Data
Before you begin migrating data, examine the quality of your current data. Look for inaccuracies and duplicates and correct them. Data cleansing helps ensure that you’re migrating high-quality data.
2. Ask IT to Start Data Mapping
Mapping your data means creating a detailed document that defines how data in your legacy ERP system corresponds to data in the new system. You’ll want to consider data fields, formats, and relationships.
3. Create Your Data Migration Plan
Work with your ERP consulting team and IT department to craft a data migration plan that outlines the sequence of data migration, roles, timelines, and backup plans in case of issues. The plan should include a rollback strategy in case the migration encounters critical problems.
4. Consider Incremental Migration
If you’re responsible for a large company with vast amounts of data, you might want to consider a phased or incremental data migration plan. You can migrate data in more manageable segments or by department. This will help reduce the risk of errors and make it easier to identify and resolve issues as they arise.
5. Start Testing Early
Your IT team should be way ahead of you on this, but it’s important to mention. You want to create a testing environment that mirrors the production system and conduct thorough testing of data migration processes. This includes unit testing, integration testing, and user acceptance testing.
6. Archive and Purge Old Data
Before migration, archive or purge any outdated or unnecessary data. This reduces the volume of data that needs to be migrated and simplifies the process.
7. Backup Your Data
Again, IT should already have this covered. Make sure that your team has reliable backups of your current data before beginning the migration. Consider this a safety net in case something goes wrong during the migration.
8. Use Data Migration Tools
Your ERP consultant can help you select the right tools to assist in your data migration process. There are specialized data migration tools that can automate the process and provide data validation and transformation capabilities.
9. Assign Data Ownership and Responsibility
Clearly define roles and responsibilities for data migration. Designate individuals who are responsible for data mapping, extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) processes.
10. Keep Detailed Documentation
Maintain thorough documentation throughout the migration process. Document the steps taken, issues encountered, and their resolutions. This documentation can be valuable for reference and audits.
11. Offer User Training
Make sure that any and all employees who will be using the new ERP system understand the changes, processes, and possible hiccups. Offer ample training to help employees adapt to the new system and its data structure.
12. Post-Migration Validation
After the data migration is complete, conduct post-migration validation to ensure that the data in the new ERP system matches the data in the old system and meets quality standards.
13. Establish Data Governance
Develop and implement data governance practices. Data governance involves creating standards and rules for stewardship and ongoing data quality monitoring.
Need Help with Your ERP Migration?
No company performs as big of a task as ERP data migration without the help from experienced consultants. Contact us to learn how we can make your ERP migration as smooth, painless, and accurate as possible.
