Data migration is a systematic and phased approach to transfer data between multiple systems using a migration methodology. Since it is a value-added activity, there are several factors that organizations should consider while evaluating their migration options. The factors for consideration are data migration cost, data volume, data quality, data retention, and system performance.
This blog post explores the biggest ERP data migration challenges and solutions.
Data Migration: Need of the Hour
- ERP Data migration is necessary to enhance the performance, efficiency, and scalability of a software application.
- It reduces operational costs by streamlining application processes and eliminates bottlenecks by moving to a more advanced solution
Challenges and Risks in ERP Data Migration Processes and Solutions to Overcome Them
Challenge One:
Problem: Data Integrity and Data Corruption
When the format and content of data in the legacy system and target system differ during the migration process, then it leads to corrupted data.
Data integrity issues such as redundant data or the presence of non-meaningful data occur due to data migration.
Data integrity issues and data corruption affects business operations because both these issues are counterproductive.
Solution:
The best way to avoid data corruption is to validate each and every dataset between legacy and target system.
Here are some of the data validation methodologies that organizations can use:
The subset of Data Validation
In this methodology, organizations can choose a subset of records based on the row number. For instance, the first thousand records or the first five to six thousand records. The benefit of this methodology is that it selects more records and expects more data coverage based on higher profitability.
Sample Data Validation
In this methodology, comparison occurs between random sample records of legacy and target systems
Complete Data Set Validation
It is an ideal validation method that organizations should use in migration testing. In this methodology, the record is compared in a bidirectional way. Every record is compared in the legacy system against the target system and vice versa.
Challenge Two:
Problem: Semantics Risks
Sometimes, during migration, the meaning of legacy column and target column is the same but their unit of measurement is different. Due to this the meaning of data also changes completely. One thing to notice here is that the data is neither lost nor corrupted. Migration is successful but it is not useful to the organization in terms of objective.
Solution:
- Subject matter experts and real-time users should be involved in the feasibility study and such semantic issues should be detected at an early stage in the project lifecycle.
- Testers can manually compare objects present in the source and target application by looking at the main screen of the application.
Challenge Three:
Problem: Interference Risks
Interference risk happens when all the stakeholders are using the same source application simultaneously during the transition period. For instance, if one stakeholder is accessing a particular table and he locks it then the other person will not be able to access it.
Solution:
Interference risk should be managed at the organizational level at the time of project planning. One way is to plan dry run in a pre-production environment involving all the stakeholders. Organizations can also plan multiple mock runs involving all stakeholders.
Oodles ERP Services
Our team has extensive experience in best ERP software solutions data migration. We have expertise in migrating data to multiple ERP systems. We, at Oodles ERP, offer data migration solutions that provide organizations the ability to transfer archived emails to platforms of their choice either on the cloud or on-premise. Whether it’s about migrating data from Odoo to Netsuite or Salesforce to HubSpot or vice-versa, we can do it all.
For instance,
1.) If an organization wants to migrate the data from Odoo to it’s newer versions, then we use tools like OpenUpgrade to migrate all organizational data
2.) Our ERP professionals use tools like Ant Migration to extract, transform and load the business accounts, contacts, opportunities and custom objects data in Salesforce.
Our professional team of custom ERP software development services, testers and validation specialists ensure smooth data migration with rigorous testing and validation methods.
Concluding Thoughts:
Data migration is an important aspect of IT operations in today’s business era. If not performed properly, it can cause major disruption as a result of application performance and data quality performance.
To Read More: Odoo 12: Explore what it stores for Mobile ERP Application Development
