Never Neglect Migration!

Unless you are starting a business from scratch, at the go-live of any major IT implementation/modernization, you will start serving more existing customers than the new customers.

From Digital Transformations and Modernization projects to all sorts of Business and IT projects started due company merges, acquisitions and spin-offs, companies always aim to serve customers with a better experience, improve operational efficiency and explore new business opportunities. One thing that many companies don't give the right attention is the Business, System and Data Migration.

Business Migration

Coming from one channel or operational model to another (like adding retail shops on top of online stores or starting a new activity such as adding last mile delivery to existing logistics operation or simply moving to a digital operation) requires a Business Migration, where people, culture, systems must integrate and operate seamlessly, providing the right experience to the customers and bringing optimal results to the company. Generally, a business transformation/modernization/expansion project will lead to IT projects which may lead to Systems and Data Migration.

System Migration

Modernization, Digital Transformation, Platform improvement... You name it. Any time the company moves systems in the architecture landscape or move business capabilities towards different systems it ends up migrating either from own premises to cloud, older to newer version, different physical or logical datacenter location or one technology to another. Even with a small version upgrade in a system can be considered a System Migration with enterprise scale impact - knowledge management, training, service catalog, infrastructure operation (disaster recovery, managed services, etc.) to mention some. Many times, a System Migration will also trigger a Data Migration.

Data Migration

More often spoken - and neglected - the Data Migration is presented as a challenge to many organizations. When it comes to Data Migration, as the name define, the company needs to move data from one platform to another - sometimes from old to new version of software, on-prem to cloud or one system to a different one. 

All aspects of migration (Business, System and Data) should be considered as critical success factors in the initial planning of the program or project. Having the right team, well defined strategy, companywide alignment, tracking all related impacts, plan for delivery of all dependencies is some of the critical aspects of a successful migration. We can pass hours discussing about it, but I want to know from you how can I help on your next migration and what are the next article you want to read here. Feel free to write it in the comments below or reach out to me directly!

Don't rely on "good luck" for your next migration!