Data migration can be stressful—even for experienced professionals. The more complex your systems and the longer you’ve been collecting data, the harder it is to understand, clean, and transfer it accurately.
Over time, your business processes may change. New apps get added. Different users may input data inconsistently. These factors can turn data migration into a serious challenge. Still, during any new implementation, the data migration phase is critical. Minor issues can cause delays. Major ones may derail the entire project.
Let’s walk through six proven tips that can make your Salesforce data migration smoother and more successful.
1. Define the Scope of Your Data Migration
When migrating to a new CRM like Salesforce, don’t transfer everything blindly. Be intentional. Only move the data you really need.
Start by answering:
- What data is essential to retain?
- How far back do records need to go?
- What fields are outdated or no longer used?
Also, think about new data points you want to start tracking. A clean slate gives you a chance to update your data strategy.
2. Make Realistic Time Estimates for Data Migration
Data migration is often more time-consuming than expected. Even small databases involve several steps.
Each field must be reviewed to:
- Understand its structure and content
- Map it to a new field in Salesforce
- Apply transformations
- Run tests and check quality
The most time-consuming step is understanding your existing data. This can’t be automated. Analysts must manually review each field. Make sure to give yourself extra time. Overestimating is better than rushing.
3. Take a look at your data quality
Having poor, or ‘unclean’ data can be one of the biggest issues you can encounter during data migration. For example, incorrect formatting on phone numbers or dates can throw off the whole process via mapping errors. And while it may not make the migration fail, let’s be honest, things like N/A in a name or company field don’t really do much good for anyone.
Yes, it can be a lot of work to look into all of the different data fields and fix any outstanding issues, but if you don’t, the whole data migration may fail. So, it should go as a given that you should get started cleaning your data ASAP and give yourself plenty of time to do it right.
4. Involve the business team
So far we have been talking a lot about working with fields, but an essential ingredient here is to loop in your business people. You know, those people who actually use the fields in their everyday jobs. They are the ones who know the system’s ins and outs, and can best advise on what data to keep, what to get rid of, and what can be done to make improvements.
A recommendation here is to run a test batch and let your business team look at the data through the new UI so they can really see and get a feel for how it works. Not only can your team see it in action, but you get to ensure that all fields are populated and all expected relationships are working. If all is good, then go forward with the rest of the data migration.
5. Get ready for long data loads
As great as Salesforce is, it does have a few drawbacks. One of them is slower speeds when it comes to moving data back and forth from the cloud.
Local databases with good hardware can move at lightning speeds, however, a Salesforce Cloud transfer has many factors that can slow down the process, such as the network speed, Salesforce API bottlenecks, and custom Salesforce code which can also limit loads and processing.
A common strategy is to batch your data loads to ensure successful transfers, smaller load times, and to avoid clogging up the entire processing bandwidth. Just imagine how upsetting it would be to be 90% of the way through a 2-week data load and to be hit by a power outage.
6. Document everything
Ironically, our final data migration tip is to create… more data! However, this data is essential. You should ideally document everything you do in the process of data migration so that if there are any changes to the project team or you need to move your data in the future, you will have a guide available.
What information should be documented?
- How did you decide which data to migrate / not migrate? And why?
- Lessons learned, including how long it took to prepare your data for the migration. This way, if you move your data in the future you have a better idea of how much time to allow.
- What exactly have you had to do with the data to ensure it is migrated successfully?
- Note the data restrictions for the fields in both the existing system and the new system.
- Project timelines including milestones and key dates you achieved them.
- An issue log which includes any problems you came across.
- The relationships between the records (primary keys and foreign keys).
- The project team and their roles.
Hopefully, these tips have not only given you a better understanding of the data migration process but the next time you are moving all of your records, you can have a better, smoother, and more successful project.
Must Read: What Businesses Should Know Before Starting a Cloud Migration Project