A CRM migration is a valuable opportunity to improve your data’s accuracy, relevance, and structure, ensuring that it’s in the best possible condition before entering a new system. A careful, systematic approach can enhance data quality and ensure it aligns with the needs and features of your new CRM. Here’s a comprehensive guide on the essential steps for successful pre-migration data preparation.
Step 1: Assess and Validate Your Data for Quality and Accuracy
Before starting a migration, run a full data validation test to identify inaccuracies, duplicates, or incomplete information that could disrupt operations in the new CRM.
Key Actions:
- Identify Inaccuracies: Spot and correct any obvious errors in fields like names, email addresses, job titles, and phone numbers.
- Remove Duplicates: Duplicate records reduce CRM efficiency and complicate migration. Check for and remove or merge duplicate entries so each contact appears only once in the system.
- Standardise Formatting: Ensure consistent formatting across data fields. For example, dates should follow a single format (e.g., DD/MM/YYYY), job titles should be uniform, and addresses should use a consistent format.
Data Expert’s Tip:
Data Validation Tools will only ever give you 60% – 70% data accuracy. You will be left with around 30% of your databases labelled “Catch All”. These need to be manually validated, an expert data service Agency is best suited for this task.
Step 2: Enrich Existing Contacts to Meet New CRM Standards
A CRM migration is the ideal time to fill in missing data, add valuable new information, and refine categorisation for better segmentation and engagement.
Key Actions:
- Fill Data Gaps: Ensure all essential fields (such as job titles, email addresses, and company names) are complete, focusing on key contacts and high-value leads.
- Enhance Categorisation: Update each contact’s information to match the categorisation standards of the new CRM system. For example, categorise contacts by industry, company size, or job level if the new CRM supports these distinctions.
- Prioritise Accurate Contact Information: Replace generic emails with verified business emails, particularly for executive contacts, to ensure high-quality lead data for future engagement.
Data Expert’s Tip:
Make sure you have the skills to standardise information across large datasets and ensuring that categorisation aligns with the new system’s requirements. Set out the standards for your new system ahead of any such work to avoid costly re-work.
Step 3: Define Key Fields for the New CRM System
Every CRM has unique fields and data structures. Before migration, establish which fields are essential to your business and ensure your data is ready to map to them.
Key Actions:
- Identify Essential Fields: List the primary fields you need in your new CRM (e.g., Name, Job Title, Email, Company, Contact Status, Last Engagement Date).
- Match Fields to Business Goals: Align the fields with your business needs. For example, if you plan to run targeted marketing campaigns, consider adding custom fields like “Product Interest” or “Lead Source” to improve segmentation.
- Prepare a Field Mapping Plan: Create a field mapping document that details how each field in the current system will correspond to fields in the new CRM. This helps ensure consistency and avoid errors during migration.
Data Expert’s Tip:
Involve key stakeholders from marketing, sales, and customer service in the process of identifying essential fields. These teams have valuable insights into the data they rely on for day-to-day operations and decision-making. By aligning the key fields with business goals across departments, you’ll ensure the new CRM meets everyone’s needs and supports cross-functional workflows.
Step 4: Establish a Data Governance Plan for the New System
Data governance is key to maintaining data quality and ensuring consistency after migration. This plan should outline guidelines for data entry, maintenance, and regular audits.
Key Actions:
- Define Data Entry Standards: Set clear guidelines on how new data should be entered into the CRM. Standardise entries for job titles, company names, and addresses to prevent inconsistencies.
- Implement Data Maintenance Protocols: Outline procedures for regular data reviews, such as quarterly audits, to identify and correct any errors or gaps that arise over time.
- Schedule Periodic Data Clean-Ups: Plan for scheduled clean-ups, such as removing outdated contacts, purging inactive records, and updating job titles or emails.
Data Expert’s Tip:
Designate a “Data Steward” or data champion within each department (e.g., marketing, sales, customer service) to oversee and enforce data governance practices. These stewards will be responsible for ensuring adherence to data entry standards, tracking updates, and coordinating quarterly data reviews within their teams. Having dedicated stewards helps maintain accountability across the organisation, ensuring that data entry and maintenance protocols are consistently followed. Additionally, consider developing a simple data governance checklist for easy reference, which can help keep everyone on the same page and uphold data quality over the long term.
Step 5: Prepare for Migration and Importing
With your data validated, enriched, and aligned with the new CRM’s structure, it’s time to prepare for the actual migration. Careful planning here prevents data loss or corruption and ensures a smooth transition.
Key Actions:
- Create a Backup: Always back up your data before any migration. This ensures that if any issues arise, you can revert to the original data without loss.
- Run a Test Import: To prevent issues during full migration, start with a test import of a smaller data set. This allows you to spot any mapping errors or formatting inconsistencies before committing to the entire database.
- Plan the Migration Phases: Depending on the data volume and complexity, plan the migration in phases to minimise downtime and ensure quality checks can be conducted at each stage.
Data Expert’s Tip:
Conduct a “pre-flight checklist” meeting with all stakeholders involved in the migration. In this meeting, review each step in your migration plan, confirm that data backups are complete, and ensure everyone understands their responsibilities for quality checks during each phase. This checklist should cover key actions like verifying the backup process, double-checking field mapping, and detailing the test import process. A pre-flight meeting ensures everyone is aligned, and it gives you a final chance to catch potential issues, fostering a smoother, more controlled migration process with minimal surprises.
Step 6: Conduct a Post-Migration Data Review
After migration, a thorough data review ensures everything has transferred correctly and meets the quality standards set in the previous steps.
Key Actions:
- Review Data Consistency: Check for any discrepancies between the original and migrated data, paying particular attention to formatting, categorisation, and essential fields.
- Spot and Correct Errors: Address any issues that arose during migration, such as missing fields, misalignments, or duplicated records.
- Run a Final Validation: Conduct one last validation to ensure the data in your new CRM is accurate, complete, and correctly formatted.
Data Expert’s Tip:
Engaging a team of data experts from a specialised data services agency can greatly enhance the accuracy and efficiency of your post-migration review. Leveraging advanced data comparison tools, these experts can quickly identify any discrepancies in formatting, field alignment, or data consistency between the original and migrated data. By automating the identification of issues, the team can focus on resolving flagged errors rather than manually searching for them. With their in-depth knowledge and precision, data experts provide an additional layer of quality assurance, ensuring that your migrated data is accurate, fully aligned with business needs, and meets the highest standards for CRM functionality.
Conclusion: A Strategic Approach to a Smooth, Successful CRM Migration
Preparing your data for a CRM migration requires careful planning and attention to detail. By following the essential steps outlined in this guide, you can ensure that your data is optimised for the new system, enabling you to maximise the value of your CRM.
Taking the time to validate, enrich, and organise your data before migration, along with establishing clear governance protocols, helps prevent issues down the line and ensures that the migration process runs smoothly. This proactive approach not only sets you up for a successful transition but also ensures that your new CRM will be a powerful tool for driving marketing and sales effectiveness.
