QuickEasy Blog
ERP Data Migration: What Should You Move from Your Old System to a New ERP?
The time comes in most business owner’s journeys when the need to move from outdated or paper-based systems becomes business-critical. And it’s a big undertaking. Once you’ve unearthed how much an ERP system costs, once you’ve decided which ERP system to use, and if you want a cloud-based ERP or a local server, you are now faced with the ERP data migration.
A good ERP data migration starts by deciding what your business actually needs. Current customers, suppliers, stock information, materials, balances, pricing, and operational data may need to move. Duplicate or obsolete records should usually be cleaned up first. Some older history may be better kept as an archive.
The aim is not to recreate your old ERP inside the new one. It is to start with accurate, useful information that your team can trust. When we migrate a business onto QuickEasy BOS, data conversion is one part of a wider implementation process that includes configuration, testing, user sign-off, cut-over, balancing, training, and go-live support.
Key takeaways
- Decide what information genuinely needs to move before your ERP migration starts.
- Do not automatically carry duplicate, obsolete, or poor-quality data into your new ERP.
- ERP migration in manufacturing and operational businesses can involve much more than customer names and financial balances.
- Critical information needs to be checked and reconciled before you depend on it.
- Always do an ERP implementation with experts who have a track record of successful migrations, and a tried and tested ERP implementation methodology – like the QuickEasy team.
Skip ahead: Let’s see what QuickEasy BOS can do for your business
What is ERP data migration?
ERP data migration is when agreed business information is moved from your existing systems, prepared, converted into the structure required by your new ERP, and checked that it has moved correctly.
Your starting point may be:
- A new or upgraded ERP system for small to medium businesses
- An accounting package
- Estimating software
- Printing industry software
- Inventory management software
- Production planning software
- CRM for SMEs
- Spreadsheets
- Several disconnected systems used together
Many businesses discover during migration that their information is spread more widely than they thought. Finance may have one source. Sales has another. Production relies on spreadsheets. Procurement has supplier price lists stored separately. Before we can move your data, we first need to understand what you have and where it lives.
Related: How much does an ERP system cost?
What should you move to your new ERP?
There is no universal migration list. What matters is what your business needs to operate properly from go-live. We normally find it useful to think about your existing data in four groups:
| Data | Likely approach |
| Current information you use every day | Move |
| Useful information with quality problems | Clean, then move |
| Financial and other critical figures | Move and reconcile carefully |
| Older information rarely needed operationally | Consider archiving |
Move
This is the information your people rely on to do their jobs.
Depending on your business, that may include:
- customers
- suppliers
- materials
- stock items
- cost centres
- services
- supplier prices
- production machines
- other important master data
When we convert data into BOS, we can work with information from existing estimating, accounting, or ERP systems and bring agreed data into the new environment. For operational businesses, that often goes well beyond a list of customers and suppliers.
Clean
One of the simplest rules in ERP migration is: Don’t migrate rubbish. The age-old “garbage in, garbage out” applies even to your new, upgraded ERP system. If your old system contains three versions of the same customer, obsolete material codes, inactive suppliers, incorrect contact details, or inconsistent descriptions, copying all of it into BOS gives you the same problem in a newer system.
Migration is a good opportunity to clean the information you actually want to keep.
That does not mean spending months trying to make every historical record perfect. It means identifying the data your team will use and making sure it is fit for purpose.
Reconcile
Some information needs more than a quick visual check. Financial balances, stock values, and other critical figures need to agree with the source information that has been signed off. If your old system says one thing and the new ERP says another, you need to know why before go-live. That is why balancing and sign-off form part of our cut-over process.
Archive
Some information still matters without needing to sit inside your live ERP every day. Older historical records may be useful for audit, reporting, customer queries, or reference, but loading everything accumulated over ten or fifteen years is not always the best choice.
Ask a simple question: Will someone need this information regularly inside BOS?
If the answer is yes, we can look at bringing it across. If it only needs to remain available for occasional reference, an archive may make more sense.
Related: How to Safely Modernise Your Business (Without Losing Data, Control, or Sleep)
How do you know the migrated data is correct?
Don’t judge migration success because the import completed without an error message. The business needs to check the information too.
- Your finance team understands what should balance.
- Procurement knows the suppliers.
- Sales recognises its customers.
- Production understands materials, machines, cost centres, and the information needed to get a job through the factory.
These people need to be involved. We also test the wider BOS environment with your team before final cut-over.
What happens while your old system is still changing?
Eventually, you need a clear cut-off. Imagine your team is still raising orders, processing payments, changing stock, and creating transactions in the old system while final migration is happening.
You now have two moving targets. That makes reconciliation much harder.
As part of the QuickEasy cut-over process, we agree the point at which the final transactions take place in the old system. Final data is then converted and checked, balances are taken on and reconciled, and the business moves across to BOS once the agreed checks have been completed.
Can you move from another ERP to cloud-hosted QuickEasy BOS?
Yes. If you are moving from another ERP to QuickEasy BOS and choosing cloud hosting, there are really two changes taking place:
- You are moving to a new ERP, so the same implementation methodology and data migration process applies.
- Your new BOS environment will be hosted in the cloud rather than on your main local server.
If you already use QuickEasy BOS locally and want to move that existing BOS environment into our cloud-hosted environment, that is a different project because you are not replacing the ERP itself.
We support both cloud-hosted and locally hosted BOS environments, so the right approach depends on where you are starting from.
Plan your move to QuickEasy BOS
You don’t need to fix every spreadsheet or clean your entire database before speaking to us. Start by showing us where you are now.
Tell us what system or systems you use, where your key information sits, what your team needs to retain, and what you need BOS to do from go-live.
Changing ERP is a significant project. Work with the ERP team that knows exactly what needs to happen to your data to make that transition as smooth as possible.
FAQs
What data should be migrated to a new ERP?
You normally need the current master data and operational or financial information required to run the business after go-live. This may include customers, suppliers, materials, stock, pricing, balances, cost centres, services, and other important records.
Should you clean your data before ERP migration?
Yes. Duplicate, obsolete, incomplete, and inconsistent information should be reviewed before migration so that unnecessary data problems do not follow you into the new ERP.
Do you have to migrate all historical ERP data?
No. Move the history your team genuinely needs inside the ERP and consider retaining less frequently used information in an accessible archive.
Can we keep old quotations and orders when moving to QuickEasy BOS?
Yes, where appropriate. We can import old quotations and orders from another system so that agreed history remains available as searchable information in BOS.
How do you reduce ERP data migration risk?
Agree the scope, identify the correct source data, clean important records, validate converted information, reconcile critical figures, involve your own users, and sign off the data before go-live.