Mistakes To Avoid During Salesforce Data Migration

Data is the foundation on which all CRMs are built: start with poor data, you’ll get poor returns. That’s why data migration is such a crucial part of any Salesforce implementation.

If you don’t take the time to do your Salesforce data migration right the first time around, you’ll be left with costly cleanup and a brand new Salesforce solution that can’t live up to its potential because it’s packed with incomplete or inaccurate data.

Avoid these key mistakes and achieve your data migration success.

Not Allowing Enough Time for Migration

Migrating data to Salesforce can take up a huge chunk of your implementation process. Typically, around 60% your implementation will be spent migrating your data. It’s not just a case of dragging and dropping from one CRM to another, so make sure you give yourself a realistic amount of time to audit, prepare, migrate, and test it.

Don't forget to check out: An Introduction to Salesforce Force.com Migration Tool (ANT)

Failing to Cleanse Data Before Transfer

The worst thing you can do for your new Salesforce solution is to dump a lot of low-quality data into it. Before you port over your data, you need to sort through it, make sure it’s still useful, and get it up to a good standard.

Go through your data with a fine-tooth comb, get rid of anything that’s no longer relevant, and check everything else for accuracy and completeness. Not only will this make sure your new Salesforce solution is working as efficiently as possible, but it’ll mean you have fewer data to transfer.

Think of it like moving house; sorting through everything before you box it up and haul it to a new location means you aren't moving anything you don't actually need, saving you time and effort. In the case of a CRM migration, it'll also save you money, since you're not paying for surplus storage.

Not Mapping Data Thoroughly

A recent survey found that 50% of organizations had difficulties migrating data from legacy systems during their Salesforce implementation. Issues with migrating data often arise when there is no clear-cut path or tools available to transfer data from one platform to another. For this reason, properly mapping how data from the original system will fit into Salesforce becomes all the more important.

Whether it’s a custom-built CRM or a product from a widely-known vendor like Microsoft or HubSpot, the way your legacy system classifies data is likely to be very different from the way it’s organized in Salesforce.

Once you’ve cleaned up your data, you’ll need to map it to the right fields in Salesforce, so when it gets loaded in, all your data goes in the right place and is easily searchable.

Choosing The Wrong Migration Method

When you’re ready to shift the data across to Salesforce, you need to select the right migration method. This will depend on what kind of personnel you have at your disposal, how much data you have to move, and how complex that data is. The answers to these questions will determine whether you’ll need to outsource it and whether the migration can be done manually or automated with custom tools for data migration.

Lack of Testing

Don’t leave testing to the very end. If your data isn’t arriving in Salesforce in the condition it should, you want to know about it before you’ve transferred your entire set of data over.

Check out an amazing Salesforce video tutorial here: How to Use the Lightning Knowledge Migration Tool | Salesforce Tutorial

Even if you planned and shined up your data before the migration, there’s still a chance that unforeseen issues can arise and render your newly imported data invalid or unusable. Migrating chunks of representative test data across to a Salesforce sandbox and testing it before you go ahead with the main migration is always a good idea as it allows you to spot issues that can be fixed before they affect your production instance.

Check that all data has been mapped to the right fields, run reports, and count your records to make sure everything is where it should be.

Data migration is a massive undertaking, and getting it right is critical to ensure the ongoing health and efficiency of your new Salesforce solution. But if you properly prepare and break the process down into manageable steps, you’ll most likely make your Salesforce data migration a success.