Before we dive into details let’s restate the old data conversion wisdom that ‘the best conversion is the one that was avoided.’
Think about the approach where you keep old accounting system on one of the small servers and use it for historical documents inquiry only whenever historical customer calls you. First couple of months this server might be busy providing inquiries results but after the period the shift should be toward your new Corporate ERP application while legacy system might see couple of inquiries per week or so. There might be a situation when keeping old system running might not be an option especially when you had subscription based licensing. Well let’s now move on and assume that good advice is not good enough for you and you are reading this paper due to the fact that you got to do historical data migration and probably your existing consulting company screwed up the project:
1. Check if Migration Tool is Available. In some scenarios you might be lucky and there might be migration tool available from the new ERP vendor. Several mid-market Corporate MRP packages have migration tool from such popular small business accountings as QuickBooks and Peach Tree. If you are redeploying the new version from the same vendor then instead of data conversion check if upgrade path is available. For example it is possible to update from Great Plains Accounting for DOS which was popular in 1990th all the way up to current version of Dynamics GP. If you do upgrade then there is no need to do data migration as upgrade process will do the complete job
2. Exporting Data from Legacy Accounting. There are two popular methods. First one is direct export from legacy database tables either via ODBC or through Database tools via SQL Select statements. This method requires you to know table structure of the old ERP. Each Corporate ERP is different in its design and user interface so we suggest you to address table structure question to your consultant. Also ODBC is very loose standard and each DB vendor has its own way to provide ODBC compliance. For example in order to connect to Pervasive SQL (formerly known as BTrieve) you have to produce so-called Data Definition Files (DDF). Second method is printing reports into text files, importing them into SQL database and cleansing on the level of the SQL Views. In cleansing you have to weed out report header, blank lines, page number rows, footer, summaries and other human interface friendly but not SQL compliant lines. The advantage of this second method is the fact that you do not have to learn table structure and battle the way to establish ODBC connection. This method might be the only one recommended when your old accounting has proprietary database platform and ODBC is not possible
3. Remarks about conversion data volume. Some popular modern ERP applications such as SAP Business One or Microsoft Dynamics AX (formerly known as Axapta) offer data migration tools based on Excel templates. Please note that if even you are very experienced in compiling Excel worksheets Excel is limited to maybe ten or hundred thousand of rows. If you plan is to export, cleanse and import millions or tens of millions of documents Excel at this time might not work
4. Final Import. Each Corporate ERP application has its own instruments for data import. In our opinion one of the most advanced is available in Microsoft Dynamics GP or former Great Plains. It is Integration Manager. SAP Business One is catching up with its Data Transfer Workbench where in the case of high volume you can imitate CSV templates in SQL View and connect to it via ODBC. When you are discussing budget about the final step, please note that it is typically repeated several times until you are satisfied with the quality
5. Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representative pick up the phone in St. Joseph, MI call center), help@efaru.com. We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, South West Michigan and Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). Our consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese. We feature our expertise is in International Business
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