White Papers - The Four Levels of Data Readiness

Why the common practice of data migration is not good enough!

Most companies preparing for an ERP implementation focus on Business Process Reengineering and configuration in their strategy planning and goal setting. Rarely are these companies given a meaningful explanation of their data readiness and what that means to the coming ERP system, nor do they understand why SAP® recommends allocating 20-40% of the implementation budget to data migration. Like many others, your organization has decided to retire the currently running systems and enter the new era of enterprise resource planning, the question you (and many others) have most likely avoided is:

“Is Your Data Ready for your new ERP system?”

Implementing an ERP solution can seem like an insurmountable task and leave even the most structured CEO, CFO and CIO with a feeling of trepidation. An ERP Implementation absorbs large amounts of company resources and becomes the focal point of corporate strategy in the short term, and the consequences of failing are enough to make any executive dread the decisions involved.

The common corporate understanding for the requirements of a new Oracle® or SAP system excludes the challenges of data migration. In addition, the tool-set offered by implementation partners generally focuses on configuration and business process challenges rather than the challenges of migrating the thousands of critical business objects in a complete, clean, consistent and properly formatted way. However complicated the existing systems may seem, it’s not the complexity that overwhelms implementation teams but that lack of an effective migration methodology.