Services · Migration

Data and CRM migration

Getting years of history out of an old system and into the new one, cleaned, deduplicated and reconciled so the numbers still add up.£8,000 to £20,000

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Data and CRM migration, Optimum IT Solutions

What data and crm migration actually means

Data migration is getting years of history out of an old system and into a new one, cleaned and reconciled so it can be trusted. It is the hardest and most underrated part of changing any business system, because the data in a real, live system is never as tidy as anyone remembers. It is full of duplicates, half-finished records, fields used for the wrong thing, and history that has to survive the move intact or the whole point of keeping it is lost.

The reason it is so often the thing that sinks a system change is that people budget for the shiny new software and treat the data as an afterthought, a copy-and-paste at the end. Then the new system goes live full of duplicate customers, wrong balances and missing history, nobody trusts it, and people quietly keep using the old one alongside. A migration that arrives dirty poisons the new system before it has had a chance.

So we treat the data as the real work. We get it out of the old system however we have to, through proper exports, direct database access, or screen scraping where a stubborn old system leaves no other way, then clean it, remove the duplicates, map it correctly to the new structure, and reconcile it so the numbers actually add up against what they were before. The aim is a new system people trust from day one, because what is in it is right.

See it work

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A scripted demonstration. Real migrations are planned, tested on a copy first, and cut over out of hours so your team keeps working.

How it helps your business

The first benefit is that the new system actually gets used, which sounds obvious until you have seen how often a system change fails on exactly this. People adopt a system they trust and abandon one they do not, and trust comes almost entirely from whether the data looks right when they open it. Clean, reconciled data is the difference between a change that takes and an expensive one everyone quietly works around.

The second is that you keep your history, which is worth more than people think. Years of customer records, past orders, notes, balances and correspondence are a genuine asset, the memory of the business, and losing or corrupting it in a move throws that away. Carrying it across intact and cleaned means you keep the memory and lose only the mess, so the new system starts richer than the old one rather than emptier.

And the reconciliation catches errors that would otherwise surface at the worst time. Checking that the migrated numbers add up against the originals is how you find the balance that did not transfer or the records that got dropped, before they turn into a wrong invoice or a missing customer in front of a client. Finding those in a controlled migration is a quiet fix; finding them live is an embarrassment.

How data and crm migration helps your business, Optimum IT Solutions

What is included

CRM, accounts, job history and document archives
Deduplication and cleansing, with a reconciliation report you can check
Legacy systems with no export, including screen scraping where there is no other way

Real examples

Illustrative cases. Tap one to see what happened and what could have been done.

The duplicates that would have wrecked it

The case

A wholesaler moving to a new CRM had thousands of duplicate and half-complete customer records built up over a decade, and the original plan was simply to import the lot, which would have launched the new system already full of confusion.

What could have been done

Cleaning and deduplicating the data first, reconciling it, and importing a version people can trust means the new CRM goes live clean and is actually adopted rather than resented.

Getting data out of a system that fought back

The case

A firm needed fifteen years of records out of an ancient bespoke system whose supplier was long gone and which had no usable export at all, so everyone else had told them the history was lost.

What could have been done

Extracting it directly and, where even that is blocked, by carefully scraping the screens, then cleaning and mapping it into the new system, keeps a decade and a half of business memory that would otherwise have been written off.

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Common questions about data and crm migration

How much does data and crm migration cost?

£8,000 to £20,000. We agree the exact number before any work starts, so there are no open ended day rates.

How long does data and crm migration take?

Most work of this kind is live within three to four weeks. We give you a date before we begin and tell you early if anything threatens it.

Do you work outside Edinburgh?

Yes. We are based in Edinburgh and work on site across the Lothians, Fife and Glasgow, and remotely across the United Kingdom.