Retail leaders: Fix 12 data migration mistakes before it’s too late (Part 2)

Part 2: People & Governance (The Human Element)

Welcome back to our series on the 12 mistakes threatening your retail ERP migration. Last week, we discussed why proper preparation and respecting peak trading freezes are non-negotiable. It was good stuff, if I don’t say so myself.

I’ll let you be the judge though - if you haven’t yet had a read through, catch-up on the series here: LINK

Today, we focus on the human side of Data Migration (DM) projects.

And no, I’m not just talking about your IT staff.

When you embark on a transformational journey, you’re taking your whole business with you, people included. They have to be bought into the vision, they need to be aligned with the plan, and they need to have the capacity to execute the tasks assigned to them. Data Migration Partner or not, your migration won’t be successful without your people engaging with the programme.

Anyway, enough rambling, you’re here for some tasty takeaways, and I’m all out of pizza. So, let’s get stuck into people-based DM mistakes you can avoid in your next project.

MISTAKE #4: Believing data migration is purely an IT exercise

You’ve picked your new target system - it has all the bells and whistles. You’re excited to get cracking - it’ll be up in no time!

After all, you’re not doing anything crazy with the data, you’ll just lift-and-shift into the new system. Bish bash bosh, job done. Your SKUs, Customers, Employees, etc. - they’ll all just be the same in the new system, right?

The problem:

Excuse my sarcastic phrasing above, but, if we look beyond that, we are left with the facts: no two ERP, WMS, CRM, etc. systems are the same.

By design, you cannot lift-and-shift.

This means your data will need to be manipulated in some way to meet the structure and formatting required by the new system. It’s quite common to perform transformations / cleansing such as:

• Mapping legacy values or codes to target values or codes, e.g. Supplier Status, Unit of Measure, Order Status, Inventory Status, Reason Codes, etc.

  
  

• Fabricating concepts that don’t exist in your source system, e.g. Worker Assignments

  
  

• De-duplicating and sanitisation of data, e.g. Bank Master Data

… and many more.

But now, you’ve tampered with the data, and it needs to be reverified. Who’s going to do that? Your IT staff? The truth is, they’re not equipped with the knowledge and nuance of the data like your SMEs are to feasibly sign off to say a data migration exercise was successful or not.

But notice, I also mentioned transformations and cleansing above and gave some activities - do these look like decisions and tasks that should happen in a silo, and then you, as a business user, find out about all these manipulations for the first time at go-live?

Food for thought:

• Build business SME time into the plan - Technical and business staff will need to collaborate heavily on a data migration project, but realise that your business SMEs will need to have significant involvement to validate the accuracy of transformed data. A good DM project will build in multiple opportunities to do this, such as Pre-Load Validation, and Post-Load Reconciliation, as part of each DM test cycle execution.

  
  

• Technology is the engine, people steer it - Your tooling and technical teams provide the mechanism by which data can be transferred from one system to another, but you need your business SMEs to help drive it. From Discovery & Design, to Cutover, they need a hand on the wheel to keep the project steering towards success.

  
  

• Bring in a specialist - Working with an experienced DM Partner is highly advised here. Part of their value is taking the technical jargon that you’re likely fed from your technical teams and System Integrator (SI), and translating it into something actionable for business SMEs.

  
  

• Oh hey, heard of binary10? We do Data Migration, it’s kind of our thing. If you need support with ‘bridging-the-gap’, book a consultation [link here] with a Data Expert and tell us a little about your project.

  (Didn’t even give you a warning this time, by the end of this series, I’ll be completely devoid of morals!)

MISTAKE #5: Proceeding without empowered Data Owners

So, you’ve taken on board mistake #4 and you want your business SMEs involved. You’ve brought in your lieutenants, and you get your project started.

Design workshops wrap up with woolly outcomes, and lists as-long-as-your-arm of action items and clarifications for your teams to take away. You start running behind schedule because the sign-offs on the designs are taking longer than expected, and ultimately you decide to press on - the designs are complete, you just need to get the techies building and testing, right?

The problem:

If you don’t know who your Data Owners are for each distinct data area (HR, Payroll, Procurement, Projects, and so on…), you’ll end running into:

• Chasing decisions indefinitely

  
  

• Expensive Change Requests due to improperly reviewed or approved designs

  
  

• Timelines that keep extending, costing you money, and giving you the headache of wondering how you’re going to convince your board that it’s still worth doing.

Food for thought:

• Map out your Data Owner Matrix early - sit down and define who in your business is definitively accountable for each area of data. Getting ahead of this before your project starts is even better.

  
  

• Define the expectations of the Data Owner - they should be the judge, jury and executioner when it comes to decisions within their area of accountability. Making it clear that you need them to be making decisions and defining what correct looks like, ensures you’re all on the same page, and will save headaches further down the line.

  
  

• Pick people with a ‘backbone’ - this may sound harsh, but there’s a difference between knowing you’re able to make a decision, and actually being capable of doing so. Your Data Owners have to be comfortable with making decisions, sometimes on-the-the-spot. If they’re not, they aren’t going to be supporting your vision for success.

MISTAKE #6: Treating SME involvement as a ‘side-desk’ job

You’ve got your SMEs involved, and you know who your Data Owners are, but have you considered what impact this’ll have on their day job, or are you expecting them to give it ‘the old college try’ to fit it into their day without any degradation to your business continuity?

The problem:

Your SMEs are already fully committed to their BAU roles. As far as they’re concerned, BAU comes first.

Retail moves fast. If you’re expecting your e-commerce manager to validate thousands of rows of legacy data whilst simultaneously running a Black Friday campaign, they’ll fail at both. Similarly, your payroll team aren’t going to be able to close out this month’s payroll and full reconcile the payroll migration.

In those instances, BAU will get the focus.

Food for thought:

• Backfill BAU roles - bring in extra people to support the day-to-day activities so your SMEs can free themselves from their BAU ‘shackles’. This will give them the space to truly focus on making the DM project a success. This may also be a good time allow some of your staff to ‘act-up’ into more senior roles, which has the side benefit of shoring up departmental business continuity, too.

  
  

• Define the split - make it clear to your SMEs what the split is between their roles. Whether it’s 50:50, 75:25, 100:0, this needs to be explicit.

  
  

• Respect the split & define your SME ‘blackout’ periods - There may be crucial periods that you simply cannot operate without Bob from Accounts, or Jane from HR. In which case, this needs to be clearly built into the DM delivery plan and understood that no related critical activity can occur over that period. Outside of those ‘blackout’ periods, provide a good example to your staff by respecting the boundaries you’ve set up, so that they do, too. If you’re announcing to the project that Danielle is 75% allocated, she’ll need to be 75% allocated, because your technical teams and partners are depending on her to be, too.

BONUS MISTA- you know the drill…

Yep, it’s that time again.

Subscribe to binary10 [link here] and get a lifetime’s supply of cake!**

**Cake not included. Not a real promotion.

Legal take the fun out of everything.***

***Views expressed are Chris’ own and not necessarily representative of binary10.

Join us next week for Part 3, where we’ll tackle Validation and Testing, and why chasing perfection might be the most dangerous mistake of all.

Article by:

Chris Davis

Follow me on LinkedIn