Converting Data from One Accounting System to Another or How to Avoid Implementation Failures

In the case of downsizing the process goes in opposite direction: from Oracle Financials to Dynamics GP or you name it.  When you are switching your ERP systems one of the steps seems to be required.  And this step is data migration, such as customers, vendors, GL accounts, historical sales and purchasing invoices to open the list.  If you underestimate the attention that is necessary toward data export, massage and migration this small phase might eat the whole implementation budget and schedule.  The easiest way to be caught in this trap is suggest ‘to migrate everything’ from the old system to the new one.  Let’s review various strategies and typical migration paths:

1. The best conversion is the one that was avoided.  Instead of pulling all the data to your new system just consider keeping the old one always on for data lookup only.  If old customer calls and asks about the historical purchase this is probably acceptable to apologize for some delay while you are login the old server and opening the query.  In the case of the possible future audit we’ve never seen issues where auditor doesn’t accept the way of printing required reports from both current and legacy databases.  In certain situations you cannot keep the old application available.  One example would be software subscription model, where you pay for the subscription and as you decide to walk away from it – you lose the privilege to query the old records.  This is one of the reasons that we do not generally favor the subscription idea – you own your records and always should have the way to review them in the future time.  In the case of subscription we strongly recommend you to export all your master records and documents from the subscription database into something like MS SQL Server custom database, MS Access or maybe text files

2. Simplest conversion is GL Accounts with beginning balances, customers and vendors with their address records.  You do it at the end of your fiscal year or fiscal period and start over in the new application at the first day of the next period.  We strongly recommend you to keep conversion project under control and try to make it minimal.  General Ledger chart of accounts could be keyed in manually and every accountant should know how to do that type of entries.  Customers are typically easy to be exported into Excel format and imported into new application from there.  And your suppliers will probably call you on their own initiative to check delivery and payment status and you have the option here to key in vendor invoice second time upon the reminder

3. Importing historical documents.  This is the step that we discourage you to do.  Historical documents might be numerous and be counted in millions.  Importing such a large number of documents requires computing time, quality assurance, reprocessing in the new system.  And this project typically is repeated dozen times prior to final import.  And at the same time – likely that in the near future only fraction of the percent of the historical documents poll will be requested for reviewing.  Even in the case where you used ERP subscription model we rather recommend you exporting into simple format versus moving all the history into the new accounting

4. Popular migration paths.  Let’s begin with the examples where you are lucky and there is so-called migration tool, which does the job of data migration for you.  Let’s assume that you are on Great Plains Accounting DOS version 9.5 or earlier.  If you decide to switch to let’s say SAP Business One 8.81 or earlier – there is no migration tool and you have to export tables from GPA Btrieve database and then reimport them by filling out CSV templates and do import via Data Transfer Workbench.  However if you decide to purchase your future ERP application from Great Plains Software successor Microsoft Business Solutions you can enjoy software license discount as well as the fact that there are migration tools.  You can go all the way from GPA 9.5 to Dynamics GP 2010 and this is current version now in July 2011.  You can also enjoy discounts and migration tool advantage moving from Microsoft Small Business Financials to Dynamics GP Business Ready.  It is also popular switch from Great Plains Dynamics to AX where there is no direct migration tool but both applications could be supported by the same consulting company and its technical consultants.  SAP Business One is also on the rise and we contemplate numerous conversions from small business accounting packages, such as Peach Tree, QuickBooks, MYOB.  There are examples where customers are switching from Great Plains to SAP B1 as they think it is more simple and intuitive in use and plus it is available in foreign countries and localized there.  This last feature is especially useful for overseas branches of the multinational company

5. Where do I find resources to do challenging historical data conversion?  We’ve seen numerous examples where local reseller over promises and submit expensive proposals where hidden time is allocated to learning curve.  We think that better way is contract nationwide provider with proven records.  If you feel that your original VAR is getting issues it is important to keep reasonable balance in letting them get some additional time and be ready to get second opinion when you still have reasonable budget left over

6. Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representatives pick up the phone in Naperville and St. Joseph, MI call center).  help@efaru.com.  We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). Our consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese.  One of our experiences is international Corporate ERP and Consolidated Financial reporting