Salesforce Data Migration could be very overwhelming and time taking especially when you are dealing with a huge amount of data. It requires proper process and precision to implement data migration otherwise, it could require a lot of time and energy over it, if done inaccurately. Inappropriate steps might lead to dirty data and unreliable results which could hamper the whole data of the organization.

During the last two decades, Salesforce has been widely adopted by organizations, and now it is something more than a cloud-based CRM system.  Hence, more users and organizations are getting inclined towards salesforce implementation and following data migration in salesforce to automate the business process.

This trend adoption resembles that more data is being migrated to salesforce and the salesforce developers are required to design quite complex and highly scalable data models. So, to make it possible and avoid any data migration failure, we are going to analyze the best practices for Salesforce data migration. Let’s learn in detail.

Salesforce Data Migration: Two Common Use Cases

Case I- From Another System to Salesforce Migration

There are various reasons to migrate data from different processing to Salesforce CRM. Among them, the first would be, the functionality of the existing systems already present in the Salesforce CRM platform, then there’s no compelling reason to keep using two separate business management systems. 

Secondly, a business is moving from an existing CRM system to Salesforce and has to carry or migrate all the data with them. In addition to that, when a business is working in association with another business that doesn’t use Salesforce, they need to regularly import or migrate data from their CRM solution.

Case II- Data Migration From One Salesforce Organization to Another

Multiple businesses are interconnected to each other to fulfill their business needs, thus the businesses require to migrate or share some data from their organization to another. It is quite evident that big organizations in the multi-department operate on multiple salesforce solutions in close association with each other, which requires sharing data among them every now and then.

Apart from that, it could be possible that the organization’s data model has not been organized in a manner to scale the business processes or the business could not operate without rebuilding the salesforce from an organization to operate. To ensure that the relevant data is getting introduced to the new organization after it has been aligned and cleaned to the new data model.

Business Strategies to Implement Salesforce Data Migration

1. Communication is of Utmost Important

Before implementing such steps, ensure the data migration is communicated to all the relevant users. Along with the detailed changes that are about to introduced. It is crucial especially when you are planning to migrate or import complete data from another system or a legacy CRM. As a matter of fact, this data migration and changes will affect multiple teams and users at a time. Therefore ensuring every related individual is communicated properly and before time.

2. Scope, Timeline, and Budget Definitions

Before implementing data migration, it is recommended to design proper instruction details for your data team. It includes a detailed guide of the project scope, budget, ad timeline. Well, planning progression feels quite monotonous. However it delivers a proper arrangement that reviews and allows to predict situations to get prepared for each likely danger and dispenses all necessary resources before the time. 

Specifically, it assists us with analyzing how much data migration is required. Apart from that, how far back we go for any element in your source, and build target data models. Keeping the salesforce data migration within the budget and required timeline. It is important for any organization to keep the smooth running of the organization’s other processes.

3. Ensure Data Integrity Before and After Data Migration

Before data migration, plan where you are sharing your data, not where it’s coming from. Therefore, clean the data before migrating it into your organization’s Salesforce environment. Ensure your data is clean to maintain salesforce data migration integrity. So that your users are getting access to flawless and significant information from the data.

Well, after receiving the data, now it’s time to clean the data again after relocating it. Frequently during data migration, you can see that you have copies of a single piece of data. Because of merging more than one data source. Combine these copies and clean up any extra information. To make sure that your users have the best of salesforce implementation CRM in the organization.

4. Acknowledge your Successful Data Migration

A Salesforce Data Migration is not a simple errand. So try to remunerate yourself and your group as you hit the milestone. In addition to the fact that it is merited, however, getting your clients excited for the Salesforce system implementation will increase the user adoption rate to use the platform.

Technical Strategies for Data Migration in Salesforce

1. Have A Data Governance Plan

To create and plan for a data governance plan first is the primary best practice for effective data migration in salesforce CRM.

Your business ought to follow a well-defined process to implement data migration. Make sure all your business partners are in total agreement of being on the same page. The enterprise-level of data management initiative should get planned. On the other hand, it can be a basic agreement between the people liable for Salesforce and the system data management system. While abiding by and having a data governance plan promotes an ongoing process for data migration in the CRM system. It ensures the data is put forward for migration is clean.

2. Choose Data Migration Tools

Pick your tools very wisely. As there are a lot of tools available in the market that claim to support clean and easy data migration. Hence, analyze each tool thoroughly and find their limitations based on your size of data migration. For instance, if you have to migrate data of size more than 50,000 records. Then it is suggested not to use the Salesforce Data Import Wizard.

3. Identify your fields and Plan your Migration Order

Identify each field that has data and the data is in a readable format on your salesforce objects. It is necessary to ensure each field has data before migrating the data otherwise, the system will reject it.

Now, plan your data migration process. It is required in case your data require a Master-Detail relationship first. Thus, you have to fill the parent data first, then the child data, otherwise the process will fail.

4. Plan Labels and APIs Name

Ensure to define a consistent naming of your object’s and field’s API names while developing your data model. As salesforce implementation follows an aligned approach for labels and APIs name as much as possible. 

5. Plan for Inevitable Errors

In salesforce data migration, there is always a scope and error which may lead you to ruin the complete data migration. The higher probability of this problem could be because of uncleaned data, or incorrectly formatted data, or the validation rule might get affected in Salesforce. Thus, salesforce follows best practices to record the error users interacted with. This process helps you to migrate the data easily by taking care of data tidiness, rather than getting stuck at any specific point.  

Salesforce Data Migration Checklist

Planning is the major step to tackle any unforeseen situation in Salesforce and in Salesforce Data Migration as well. Below are some crucial checklists that you need to put into your planning while carrying out the data migration process. It will lead you in the direction of successful migration.

1. Create Data Backup

Backup is the key to keeping your data secure and resume the previous data in case of any flaw. So, always go for backup first, while implementing Salesforce Data Migration. As it is always better to be safe than sorry. In case of any mistake, you can easily run our business processes without any stress. You can prefer, Skyvia Backup can take your salesforce data backup easily.

2. Sort Data Before Migrating

Collect the data you want to migrate. Now, keep track of each data from where it has been taken, where it is migrating, and how to handle if any dispute arises.

3. Create your Data Migration Plan & Workbook

Define your data migration plan by defining the sequence of each object to migrate. Then, create a data migration workbook to store the detailed information list of migrated data to and from the system. 

4. Salesforce Data Migration Documentation

Keep a documented record of each step involved during, before, and after data migration. This will help to analyze things in case of any discrepancy. Can also create learning checklists and inefficiencies for your future reference to avoid such situations especially while tackling the huge data migration.

Conclusion

To begin data migration from your Salesforce implementation, you should guarantee that your data migration from the existing system is without a hitch and secure. Regardless of whether you are aware of the best procedures, you may end up committing an error. It may have an adverse outcome for your business.

So, if you are also looking to migrate data from your system, then don’t forget to follow the instructions. For further assistance and guidance, you can hire a salesforce developer or a salesforce implementation agency to take your business ahead. You can also hire IT experts from Supersourcing to take your business processes ahead.