ERP Migration - Do's, Don'ts and Tips

Ever tried to migrate your ERP system or tried migrating your non-integrated systems into an integrated ERP s/w, you would have faced with frustration and not knowing what steps to take to go live.

In this segment we will talk about

• What to Migrate?
• What not to migrate?
• How to schedule your migration?
• Testing, testing and testing, remember this is a integrated product
• Go live, finally

What to Migrate?

You would certainly migrate all your master tables such as Customers, Products/SKU's, Categories, Manufacturers, Brands, departments/locations, suppliers/vendors and website data if any for your e-commerce needs.

What NOT to migrate?

Over years you might have transactional records such as Invoicing, payables, receivables, order information, accounting transactions and lots of other transactions that occur under the hood of an ERP system, you won't be able to migrate and never should you focus too much on this either, stay away from transactional records, at the most you can provide some kind of linking between your new & old ERP for example having a customer number stored from your previous ERP system so you could link between two systems if needed. So yeah stay away from migrating transactional records.

Migration Schedule

The most important part in your ERP implementation is how to schedule your list of activity for migration, what comes first and what comes last in terms of data, who does what and when? A detailed Implementation checklist is a must and walk through the checklist with your clients and keep them updated with your tasks and work towards them, and always accept delays in your schedule due to un-avoidable circumstances, have some buffer in your schedule.

Testing, testing and testing...

It's an integrated ERP product, so "garbage in garbage out" make sure to allocate time in your schedule for testing, every time you import data into your ERP system test it, test it again. If you imported customers make sure to create a test order, RMA/returns, Invoicing, CRM communication and if you have e-Commerce website logon and place test web order, request password and check if emails are working, so its really impt to test before you decide to go live.

By testing it helps you to understand the ERP system so you can operate your business efficiently.

Go Live

Something that you were looking fwd too "Go Live", well with couple of months into this project you are now ready to hit the road and expect everything goes smooth.
Having an expert implementation specialist besides you would dramatically reduce your ERP implementation cost and you can feel the ownership of the ERP system for your business

Business owners make the mistake of not scheduling enough time to understand the system, importing non-integrated data, not able to configure the system, no testing mechanism and planning to hit the road will eventually result in frustration and hatred towards the ERP s/w, so spend your money wisely for ERP implementation, spend 50% in buying the ERP software and another 50% for Implementation , Support and training.