Migration activities have always been the neglected middle-child of system implementations. While monumentally important for continued business operations, it has often been delayed, deprioritized, or made to conform to the plans of other parts of the implementation project. Traditionally, large data migration has been completed with complex bespoke tools and customized programming. A process associated with high risk of data quality issues, low transparency, non-validated processes, and high cost.
Data is the most crucial asset of Life Science organizations, and special care should be given to migrating data between legacy and new SaaS systems. This has introduced more complex system setups, requiring additional integrations and the need for increased inter-system reliability.
Migration of data between IT systems therefore requires unique focus on all aspects of data, business, and IT continuity. A special focus must be given to making data migrations a major part of the overall project and making it a part of the “business solution”, instead of a technical issue to overcome. Data migrations have a major influence on timelines, and many other aspects of the implementation, e.g., scope, configuration , system setup, and validation.
Migrating into/integrating with a CTMS with built-in data migration/integration capabilities will save a lot of time, money, and effort.
