As a business owner or manager, the onus falls on you to periodically analyze the efficiency of your operational processes. Due to general expansion and technological innovation that challenges you to better manage, store, and access your customer data, a CRM change might be beneficial.
Whether you want to migrate to a new CRM system in order to integrate a wider variety of tools or to automate certain processes unique to your business, making use of a comprehensive data migration checklist can help you to keep track of important steps during this delicate process.
Achieving all the following milestones in your migration journey will help you to safely transport your customer data from a dated CRM to a software solution that serves the unique needs of your company.
Analyze Your Current CRM
Knowing what aspects worked in your current legacy solution and where it fell short will help you to critically assess a new CRM software. This will also help you to review your business requirements and pinpoint which CRM parameters you would like to include in your new customer data solution.
Once you know what structure your new CRM would have to take on to support your vision, it will make it a lot easier to master the next steps in the migration process.
Select and Customize Your Target CRM
Keeping the findings of your analysis in the previous checkpoint in mind, you are now ready to choose a CRM platform that will support your business in new ways.
Choose a platform that complies to the growing needs of your business and feel free to add new data fields if your CRM requires it. Furthermore, it would also be quite beneficial to explore any other customization’s and establish their benefits before settling on a final CRM structure.
If at all possible, try out a customer relationship management system that offers a free trial to see if all your developmental needs will be met before you fully commit.
Take Stock of Relevant Data
To figure out what data you plan on migrating and what data can be considered dispensable, you should organize all of your data records. To do this, implement data managing rules that simplify how you store data in your CRM system.
In addition to bringing some order to the migration process, this will also help you to take stock of what data you have. Knowing what modules to keep and how they will be utilized in your new CRM will enable you to only migrate what you truly need.
Create a Data Map
Once you know exactly what data will make the cut and how you plan on structuring your new CRM system, you will need to create a data map. This is a representation detailing where your data originates on your legacy software and where it will end up on the new system.
If you are dealing with multiple solutions that all need to integrate into one CRM, then creating a data map can get quite tricky. However, if done successfully, data mapping will mitigate your risk factors and provide you with a detailed overview of your migration plan.
Develop a Migration Tool
After you have formulated your migration plan it is now time to make it actionable through the help of a migration device or script. This migration tool will be responsible for moving all your customer data to your new CRM automatically.
Professional migration service providers will be able to formulate the precise algorithms and error detection mechanisms that should equip a capable migration tool. So if you don’t feel up to the task of navigating the actual migration process yourself, you can always consult a seasoned migration designer.
Run a Test
After selecting or developing your migration tool test it by performing a partial import. However, make sure that your data sample is big enough to enable detection of any possible errors. For a foolproof trial run, be sure to perform more than one test on different data clusters.
This process will enable you to tweak your migration tool and prevent any real disasters when finally moving all of your data into your new CRM.
Migrate Your CRM Data
After you are fully satisfied with the results of all the migration tests, it is time to migrate all of your data from the legacy software to the new CRM. Be sure to communicate the date of transference to your team, and to scan the transported data for any possible hiccups that might arise during the final move.
Acquiring a new CRM solution for your business is an intricate process that can go wrong in numerous ways. In order to ensure the best outcome, call WordHerd today to get expert assistance in choosing the right CRM software and to make use of their tailored CRM migration services.