6 Actionable Tips for ERP Data Migration

ERP data migration can be a tricky subject for organizations to wrap their head around.

You are, after all, having to shift a substantial amount of data online to best make use of the cloud.

81% of businesses are now using multi-cloud landscapes to support their operations and over a quarter of them are spending over $6 million a year on infrastructure in the public cloud

Experts indicate that nearly 96% of all companies are using the cloud in some way, as cloud solutions offer serious competitive advantages in the areas of flexibility, scalability, and advanced capabilities.

But a number of businesses which have yet to fully utilize the cloud is large too, meaning there’s a lot of SMBs with a little digital maturity, but quite a ways off from fully realizing their goals.

Because of this, there is a growing trend towards migration where businesses are turning to a hybrid public/private cloud scenario to ease the transition from on-premise to off-premise data handling and ensure that enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications enjoy wider utilization.

In other words, an effective transition that makes use of the data you have, rather than a bit-part transition that makes use of cloud solutions in a much smaller manner.

6 Steps You Can Take for Smoother ERP Data Migration

While the shift to new infrastructure is bound to have an effect, at least for the short term, on daily business practices, there are many things you can do to lessen the impact on staff and ensure a higher level of customer satisfaction across all business touchpoints.

We’ve rounded up six of the most impactful—and actionable—ways to ensure your cloud migration goes as swiftly and as smoothly as possible.

1. Assign Ownership of Data Cleansing Tasks

One of the primary tasks before migration begins is to cleanse your databases of inaccurate or inconsistent data.

However, while many businesses tend to dump this action item on their IT team, it is not necessarily an IT-related task.

Data stewardship falls upon the subject matter experts in each department, making it a business function rather than an IT function.

Data owners should be identified for specific data sets so they can take appropriate action to cleanse their data ahead of migration.

2. Remove Duplicate Data

An important part of the task of data cleansing is identifying—and removing—duplicate data sets.

Duplicate data can slow integrations or cause them to fail, slow down overall performance, cause further data corruption, and even impact customer satisfaction.

Be sure your staff is clear on what is considered redundant information and that they work to consolidate and remove it prior to migration.

This is also a great opportunity to clean up your data sets and will help ensure healthy data sets for future analytics and protect your system from lag.

3. Don’t Migrate What You Don’t Need

While many departments find it tempting to hoard data on the off chance a nugget of information will be needed at some point down the line, doing so can cause system disruption and reduce productivity benefits by clogging up good data sets with useless information.

Be discerning about your data choices; keep only data that has value on a regular basis, is not already stored elsewhere, is frequently used by employees for reference, or must be archived for future reference.

4. Consider Industry Regulations and Compliance

Before you cleanse, it’s appropriate to take a hard look at the regulations and compliance requirements that govern your industry.

Healthcare agencies looking to digitally transform, for example, have specific rules governing the use and disposal of electronic health records under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Special care must be taken to correctly handle sensitive data to prevent your organization from falling out of compliance and being put at risk of fines or lawsuits.

5. Ensure Data Hygiene

Now that you’ve cleansed your data, you’ll want to ensure that you put good data hygiene protocols into place to ensure you avoid a future build-up of bad data.

To do this, begin with an audit to ascertain the success of your cleansing process.

Then, establish a set of standardized rules and constraints that are easily understandable and actionable.

Follow this with the installation of an automated data cleansing system to periodically scrub databases for redundancies.

Finally, dismantle departmental silos and set a goal to keep data updated across the board and in accordance with all departments.

6. Test Before Migrating

One of the best ways to ensure a smooth transition to a cloud-based environment is to rigorously test to expose areas of instability and incompatibility.

This will push your infrastructure and software to their limit to ensure your organization can handle peak loads without critical failures.

It also allows errors and technical issues to be uncovered before your new environment goes live to help reduce the impact on staff and business processes.

Testing protocols should include functionality, general performance, vulnerability, stress and load tests, and tests of compatibility.

While this may be time-consuming at the front end, it ensures reworking is kept to a minimum and that the transition will go much faster and smoother with less disruption.

Takeaways

• Advanced cloud maturity and the trend toward migration means businesses are turning to a hybrid public/private cloud scenario to ease the transition and ensure that ERP applications enjoy wider utilization.
• This shift to a cloud-based system can have an impact on staff and customers if not handled correctly.
• Six ways to ensure a smooth transition include assigning data ownership, removing data redundancies, not migrating junk data, examining industry compliance and regulation requirements, ensuring good data hygiene moving forward, and testing before migrating.

In light of recent events, many organizations have found themselves playing catchup, trying to implement makeshift cloud solutions to make up lost ground while their workforces see drastic transformations.

To find out more about how the cloud can ensure your business is in good shape for the future, download our eBook, “Which Cloud Option Is Right For Your Business?”