Our Proven Data Migration Process
At Milestone, we understand that data migration is a critical component to your business’s ERP system change over. Our structured and engineered process was developed through collaboration with construction engineers, construction IT professionals and executives over more than two decades to align with the methods construction people understand and will adopt. Our approach ensures that your data transition is smooth, secure, and aligned with your business’s needs. Below is an outline of our step-by-step process that drives our success and ultimately your company’s success.
Step 01
Initial Discovery
We begin with an in-depth consultation to understand your current systems and your business objectives for the migration. Our team works closely with your experts to identify potential risks, budget and execution challenges, ensuring that we tailor our approach to fit your company’s specific needs while maintaining the best practices that make data migrations successful.
Step 02
Data Migration Scope
In this phase, we map and identify the data your company needs to have a successful transition to the new system. More is not always the best choice from a return on investment perspective. We help your company understand the least risky and least expensive scope while presenting the cost-engineered options in a clear presentation that will make sense to your team. We carefully explain the options, allowing your team to choose the solution that best meets your company’s needs while reducing cost and risk.
Step 03
Infrastructure Configuration/System Access
As in construction, building a solid foundation in the beginning paves the way for a successful project. We consult with your company’s IT team to configure the access and data staging environment so that our joint teams can execute efficiently. We have an advantage gained from over 25 years of experience in a continuous process improvement environment. We know the groundwork that needs to be in place to make your migration efficient and remove the roadblocks to migrating your data efficiently and securely.
Step 04
Data Extraction and Transformation
In this phase, we map the existing data structures to the new system with the goal of a near seamless transition. Simultaneously, we craft a detailed migration plan that outlines the timeline, resources, and key milestones. We work closely with your subject matter experts to understand the business and what your team expects of the finished product. We ask many questions to ensure that we understand what is needed and the intended purpose for the migrated data.
Step 05
Development and Test Loads with MSG Preliminary Validation
After gathering the knowledge needed to transform the data, we build custom programs to clean and shape the data for import into the new system. As we complete the transformation programming for each data group, we test load the data and perform a preliminary validation to ensure that we have largely migrated it correctly and that the data interacts with the configurations as it should.
Step 06
Validation Planning and Training
Ultimately data validation is the responsibility of the client team that owns the data. However, it is Milestone’s responsibility to set your team up for success in the validation process. We facilitate workshops to assist your team in the development of a plan to execute the validation. This plan outlines each dataset to be validated and identifies the reports, forms and queries in the legacy and target systems to be used in the comparison. Additionally, we assist you in setting up a documentation process to log issues, store examples and manage the joint effort of resolving issues. This is another unique component of our data migration process. While your company’s experts perform the final validation, we are your partner by enabling your team with guidance and training so that they can be successful.
Step 07
Full Cycle Test Loads and Validation by Client
After the validation planning is complete and the transformation programs are in place, we execute several full cycle mock cutovers. We take a snapshot of your data in time, transform and load it into a test environment of your new system. Following the mock load, your team goes to work with the validation plan in hand and validates, logs and captures examples of issues. We then meet with your team to walk through the issues after which we make changes to our programs to correct them. We repeat this several times until we are sure we have worked through the issues and your team has learned to validate the data in a compressed time frame
Step 08
Go Live Planning with hour-by-hour Execution steps and schedule
Around 6 weeks out from Go Live, Milestone will facilitate a series of meetings to script out the detailed plan for the final cut over. Your implementation team, software vendor and other stakeholders will collaborate and develop a script to make the transition from the old system to the new. We work together to plan everything in advance so the cutover is mostly a non-event and you are armed with the information your team needs to know what to expect and when to do their part. This process takes some time to work through but it is well worth the effort and the peace of mind it provides for everyone on the project.
Step 09
Go Live
When we reach this phase with your team, we are simply executing a plan we have scheduled, planned and rehearsed several times. There should be no surprises as we work through the cut over plan we have documented and practiced together. The outcome is a nonevent where your company seamlessly “changes horses” midstream and this Monday is very similar to all of the Monday’s before with the exception that your team has a new system that enables them to be more successful with less effort. If we have done our job correctly your company will have better control of the business and the data they need to look into the past and make decisions for the future.
Why Milestone?
Milestone Services Group means partnering with a team that understands the complexities of the construction industry and the critical importance of your data. Our proven methodologies, industry expertise, and commitment to quality make us the go-to partner for seamless data migrations.
Testimonials
Thank you for all of your efforts on the CMIC Implementation Project. Your expertise and guidance has been invaluable to the successes of our project. In addition, your commitment to this project has made a positive impact on the efficiency of our project teams for years to come. It has truly been a privilege to collaborate with you over the last several years. I look forward to working with you in the future.
Vice PresidentENR 10 General Contractor 