Ventrax
Technology
Data migration is the part that goes wrong
Every ERP implementation has one phase that slips. It is almost always the one where ten years of existing records meet a system with rules.
Ask anyone who has implemented an ERP which phase overran. The answer is almost always migration.
Not because moving data is technically hard. Because a system with rules meets ten years of records kept without them.
What the old data looks like
- The same customer three times, spelled differently
- Payments recorded against a name rather than an account
- Units identified as "Block C flat 4" in one file and "C4" in another
- Amounts with no currency, from a period when that was obvious
- Deposits from people who never completed, still sitting as receivables
None of this was carelessness. It was a business getting on with work, using records that were sufficient for the purpose at the time.
Why it surfaces now
The new system asks questions the old files never had to answer. Which customer? Which unit? What currency? For each of the ten thousand rows.
Most of those questions cannot be answered by a machine. They need somebody who remembers.
How to plan it properly
Start before the software is chosen. Cleaning your own customer list is useful regardless of what you buy, and it is the longest task.
Decide what not to migrate. Fully completed sales from six years ago probably belong in an archive, not the live system. Every row you exclude is a decision you do not have to make.
Migrate in passes. Customers first, then units, then open balances, then history. Each pass validated before the next begins.
Run both systems briefly. A fortnight of parallel running catches what testing does not. It is tedious and it prevents go-live disasters.
Have opening balances signed off by whoever owns the accounts. If the finance manager has not agreed the opening position, every subsequent figure is disputed.
The mistake that costs most
Treating migration as a technical task handed to whoever is technical.
It is a business decision task with technical support. The person who knows that Mrs Adebayo and Mrs C. Adebayo are the same customer is not the person writing the import script. If those two people are not working side by side, the import will be technically flawless and full of wrong answers.
What to expect
It will take longer than the estimate. Plan for that openly rather than discovering it — the projects that go badly are not the ones that overrun, but the ones that overrun while everybody pretends they are on schedule.