“You’re supposed to migrate two years of history, right?” That’s the question I always get, regarding data migration, from bewildered IT managers at the beginning of an implementation. The last thing they want is the dreaded “consulting” answer of “It depends…” But if there’s ever been a truer answer, I don’t know it. There are many approaches to data migration, but a highly practical approach has served me well for years.
The question I always lead with is “Is the old system going away the day you go live?” Sometimes the answer is legitimately “yes,” either because it’s a SaaS (cloud) system or because the license gets shut off in some other way. But the vast majority of my clients answer “no,” and then we get into what I affectionately refer to as “data negotiations.”
