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What is Data Migration?
Moving your data from one system to another – whether upgrading your ERP, switching CRMs, or consolidating databases – without losing records, breaking integrations, or corrupting historical data.
What it is
Data migration is the process of moving data between systems, formats, or platforms. It happens when you switch accounting software, upgrade your ERP, move from on-premises servers to the cloud, or consolidate two databases after an acquisition. Think of it like moving house. You need to pack everything carefully, label the boxes, transport them safely, and unpack them into the right rooms – and you cannot afford to lose the family photo albums or discover that the furniture does not fit through the doors. In data terms, that means mapping every field from the old system to the new one, transforming formats, validating that nothing was lost or corrupted, and cutting over without disrupting daily operations.
Why it matters for your business
Data migrations are high-stakes and frequently go wrong. Bloor Research found that 83% of data migration projects exceed their budgets, and 40% experience data loss or extended downtime. The risks compound when migrations are treated as purely technical exercises. A $65M construction company we worked with lost 18 months of project cost data during an ERP migration because the field mapping between old and new systems was incomplete – subcontractor costs were in a custom field that nobody mapped. That missing data meant they could not accurately quote new projects for six months. The root cause was not a technology failure; it was skipping the data audit that would have caught the gap.
How we approach it
We run every migration through a four-stage process: audit (map every field, every relationship, every edge case in the old system), design (define the mapping rules, transformation logic, and validation criteria), test (run a full trial migration and reconcile every table, row count, and total against the old system), and cutover (execute the live migration with rollback procedures in place). We never skip the test migration – it is where 80% of problems are caught. After cutover, we run parallel systems for a defined period so your team can validate the new system against the old before decommissioning.
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Key Takeaways
- •83% of data migration projects exceed their budgets – the most common cause is skipping the data audit and test migration.
- •Migration is not just copying data. It involves mapping fields, transforming formats, validating completeness, and managing cutover risk.
- •Always run a full test migration before going live – it catches 80% of the problems that cause real migrations to fail.
- •Run systems in parallel after cutover. Do not decommission the old system until your team has validated the new one.