In this day and age, when every company realizes the importance of business process optimization, CRM data migration often turns up at the top of business’ agendas. Firms migrate from one system to another looking for the integration of several tools into one. They might also seek ways to automate specific processes or deploy a more flexible CRM.
Key Highlights
- The most efficient way to move data between two CRMs is to build a custom migration tool that transfers all data via API calls.
- In CRM migration, make sure each record brings all its related context; otherwise, it becomes incomplete and loses business value.
- To achieve a smooth CRM data migration, do not move everything in one tackle; instead, run a few trial migrations with sample data to find and fix issues.
- To avoid losing critical data and migration failures, make data backup a must in your CRM migration plan.
Regardless of the reasons, CRM data migration is a tough question that businesses need to tackle with caution. It’s best when management and tech specialists draft the migration checklist together.
What Is a CRM Migration?
Let’s make sure we are on the same page terms-wise and have the same answer to this question. Does it mean that companies need to transfer their existing solution in its entirety to a new software infrastructure? Well, yes and no.
In reality, what moves from an old CRM to a new one is data: companies’ customer records that bear the real business value in any CRM solution. Using professional cloud data migration services ensures data integrity through the move. And when we talk about CRM migration, what we imply is transferring data from one platform to another or from an on-premise solution to the cloud.
So, if someone asks you what CRM migration is, you know the answer: it’s all about a data migration plan. The legacy CRM stays as is, and its data is copied over to a new system. To be more specific, let’s overview what data can be involved in the migration process.
Data Types to Transfer During CRM Migration
As we’ve found out, the goal of migration is to transfer data and ensure its accuracy, compatibility, and continuity between the old and new CRM systems. However, to achieve that, you need to consider a variety of data CRM solutions often store. While it might differ slightly from case to case, there are usually common categories to highlight:
- Customer Information
This is the core information to consider as it encompasses contact and company details like names, phone numbers, emails, websites, etc. You just can’t do without it. - Communication History
Usually, it includes all interactions across various channels, meeting notes, text messages, chat logs, and so on. - Sales Data
The sales team is one the most active users of CRM tools, so their data should be well-kept — sales pipelines, leads and prospects, products and services. - Marketing Data
Marketers are other CRM geeks, expecting data like campaign details and results, lead scoring and nurturing workflows, and customer segmentation lists to be moved to a new solution. - Support Data
Under this type, you’d often find tickets, support cases, and service-level agreements. - Documents and Attachments
CRM platforms store a great deal of contracts and agreements, attachments related to specific accounts or opportunities, and other valuable documents that shouldn’t be lost. - Analytics and Reports
While, of course, you can build everything from scratch in a new CRM, it’s convenient to migrate the key historical reports, dashboards, and sales performance metrics to have them available. - User Data
It’s not all about clients, customers, or partners; user roles and permissions, activity logs, team assignments, and ownership of leads, contacts, or accounts are also something you want to keep. - Integration Data
Finally, your CRM surely integrates with third-party systems like marketing automation tools, accounting software, collaboration apps, and social media — don’t forget to transfer it, too.
Read about the Core CRM Integrations to Focus On
Benefits of CRM Migration
Now you know the definition of CRM migration and the types of data to move from one system to another. However, you might still have doubts about whether you need to approach the migration process or not. Businesses decide to shift to new solutions for various reasons; it can be a low performance of their current CRM platform, insufficient support, or high maintenance cost.
Some systems can’t offer enough connectivity with other enterprise apps, or they can miss essential features that daily operations require. Whatever the case is, migrating to a new CRM solution entails a number of benefits. Let’s quickly outline them below:
- Easily accessible data
- Enhanced customer experience
- Improved functionality
- Increased data security
- Optimized productivity
On top of that, implementing a new CRM tool in accordance with the checklist of all business requirements often results in cost reduction and faster ROI.
Data Migration Best Practices
Before moving to a detailed migration project plan, let us dwell on the most common best practices for transferring CRM data.
Being the most effective, migration via API is also the most hardcore method for CRM data migration.
This last practice often implies the development of custom elements in the target CRM. In short, this approach calls for a team of qualified specialists. Unsurprisingly, API-driven CRM migration is one of the most popular practices offered by professional CRM development and implementation companies.
10-Step CRM Data Migration Guide
We will be mostly looking at the third method when CRM migration is carried out via API integration. It requires considerably more effort and has some pitfalls that we will help you to avoid. So here’s our comprehensive checklist on the migration process:
1. Get the Team Ready for the Change
Getting all decision-makers on board with the move to a new CRM is vital for two reasons. First of all, they will be providing a business perspective, e.g., what fields can go away or what new fields should appear in the target CRM.
Secondly, they will be the most evident users of the system and may become the most rigorous testers spotting some missed data or other glitches after the process has been finished.
2. Review the Source and Target CRM
While reviewing the source CRM, you need to identify the exact use cases of how you and your employees use the platform. The use cases will often dictate what data, fields, etc. will move to a new CRM.
Undoubtedly, there will be some outdated parameters that do not need to go into the new system.
Clearly, after reviewing the source CRM, you need to find all the necessary fields and entities in the target CRM. It will need to provide the “place” for the data.
3. Spend More Time on Data Mapping
Mapping data is the most intricate process in CRM data migration projects. Keep in mind that you should transfer all entities into the new platform in their entirety.
It means that if you acquired a customer Ben Hopkins during an email marketing campaign, he has gone through the sales pipeline in two weeks, and now resides in the “Loyal Customers” group, etc. – all of this data should be available in the new CRM for the migrated Ben Hopkins.
The task of putting the data map together becomes even more complicated when you deal with several solutions that need to be integrated into a single CRM.
The same Ben Hopkins might have open tickets in your support system, which is also a subject for data migration.
Make sure that after transferring a single record into the target CRM, you still have all its surrounding data from all your integrated legacy solutions.
Before tapping into CRM migration, first and foremost, make sure you’ve created a full backup of all data. This way, you minimize the risk of data loss if anything goes wrong during the migration. Secondly, keep the legacy CRM running in parallel so you can temporarily return to the old system in case of any issues. Also, define clear metrics that will signal when something in the migration is going wrong. This way, your team can react quickly to minimize downtime and possible issues.
4. Compare CRM Structures
The structure of a CRM should conform to the data that you will be migrating into it. Spend some time to examine all custom fields in your current CRM. Will you need all of them in the target CRM?
It may be the case that these custom fields will be offered in the new CRM out-of-the-box, or replaced by other means.
Some data from your legacy solution will take a different form in the new platform. It’s a great chance to take a closer look at some of your “flat” data and add a dimension to it by attributing tags, for example.
5. Create a Migration Tool
The most technically challenging task, of course, is to develop the tool or a script that will automatically migrate all data into the new platform. CRM migration service providers should be able to assist you with this.
A professional team of CRM developers will carefully think through the migration algorithms and elaborate an error detection mechanism, as well as many other components that make up a practical migration tool.
6. Secure a Data Backup
There’s no such thing as too much caution when it comes to data. You should create a backup of all data from your CRM solution before you proceed to data migration.
Our word of advice is to shy away from a development partner who doesn’t mention data backup in their CRM migration plan. Many things can go astray during the project, and losing your data is the last thing you want to happen.
7. Run a Couple of Tests
CRM data migration projects may turn into real havoc if you decide to transfer all data in one take. It’s better to run a couple of trial migrations with several different samples of data. Do not be afraid of any errors, as it will help your tech team to improve their porting tool before they move all data into the new system.
This approach is excellent for integrating several complex solutions into a single CRM when the data has a multilevel hierarchy and links to many objects.
8. Migrate the CRM Data
After iterating on several test data migration rounds, it is finally time to migrate all the data from the previous CRM, or a range of solutions, into a new one. You are sure to find this step the most pleasing as it involves pressing the button “Migrate” and waiting for a “Successfully Migrated!” dialog to appear.
Of course, there might be some issues during the final migration. Mainly when you work with many disparate systems that might not function well at the time of import. Therefore, a team of CRM developers will be essential during the entire process.
9. Clean Up Migrated Data
Look for any inconsistencies in the migrated data during the first couple of days of using the new CRM. You may find some duplicates, missing pieces, or other overlooked details.
Aiming your new CRM not to end up with duplicate and inconsistent data, you can take the following steps before merging records:
- Define clear matching rules: This will help you compare records like email, number, unique ID, etc. to identify whether two records belong to the same person. As such, you can promptly detect duplicates.
- Normalize data formats: When data follows the same format, it becomes much easier to identify and clean up duplicates.
- Utilize data deduplication tools: They can quickly identify and automatically remove or merge duplicates.
- Backup data before merging: Having a full backup is always a wise move, as it allows you to restore the original records if anything goes wrong during the migration.
10. Train Your Employees
As with all new tools, getting used to their way of functioning is the most time-consuming process. Shorten this period by providing your personnel with adequate training right after you complete migrating all data.
As soon as all your employees understand how to use the new CRM platform, you are well-positioned to increase the productivity of your business processes.
Pitfalls to Avoid
Custom Fields in the Source CRM
Pay particular attention to all custom fields in the source CRM and see if you can find appropriate substitutes for them in the new CRM.
There is a high chance the new platform will have additional fields for integrating the custom data elements. Alternatively, ask the company that provides you with data migration services to add custom elements to the new tool.
Missed Data
When combing through your current solutions, always check if they have some archived data that is not visible in the UI. It may be useful later on for building reports, etc.
Your CRM development team should spot such archived data during the test data migrations. It will pop up as a series of “random” errors. However, drawing CRM developers’ attention to this from the start will save time and effort in the optimization of the migration tool.
Lack of Collaboration
As we’ve already mentioned, getting all stakeholders involved in the process of migration is highly important. CRM serves as a centralized source of all communications, unifying efforts of various departments and boosting the collaboration of different teams.
That’s why it is essential that the requirements of all user groups are taken into account so everyone can benefit from a better solution in the end. Make sure the process is transparent and that all possible issues can be addressed quickly.
Migrating Everything at Once
It’s easier to face difficulties and make some errors when you try to handle everything at once. Since there is a large number of sensitive data sets to take into account, it requires a thorough approach.
The best way to avoid any issues is to carefully plan the process and break it into steps that you can manage one by one. Especially if you have several systems and interconnected data that you need to migrate into a single solution.
Shortage of Expertise
It might seem an easy endeavor to move all of your data from one CRM to another. However, the process contains plenty of nuances that can cause issues like data loss if ignored. Choose a reliable and experienced partner that will help you cope with any challenges and guide you along every step of the journey.
When migrating a CRM, you should strictly follow audit and compliance requirements to keep data safe and secure. Specifically consider:
- Audit logs: This is the only way to see who made changes in the CRM system, helping improve accountability and troubleshooting.
- Access and permission records: These prevent unauthorized access in your CRM.
- Regulatory compliance records: Make sure all required data is stored, retained, and handled according to relevant laws and industry regulations.
Ready to Make a Move?
Velvetech’s team has completed multiple CRM data migration projects for various platforms: from Salesforce and SugarCRM to HubSpot and Creatio. Our professional services include data migration from a single legacy platform or an array of third-party solutions.
Take a look at one of the case studies where Velvetech has helped a telesales company with migration from their legacy in-house CRM.
Velvetech’s team will be happy to assist you. Get in touch to discuss the specifics of your project.
