Data Services

CRM Data Migration

Move systems without losing history.

What this covers

Changing CRM shouldn't mean losing years of relationships and context. We map, clean and migrate your data so nothing important gets left behind.

  • Full field-mapping between old and new systems
  • History, notes and relationships preserved
  • Cleaned on the way in, a fresh start, not a copy of the mess
  • Runs alongside our Flowbird Tunnel for secure on-prem to cloud transfer

Many systems in, one source of truth out

A migration is not a copy and paste. Records are mapped, de-duplicated and validated on the way through, so what lands in the new system is better than what left the old one.

A migration is where you find out how bad the data was

Every business believes its data is roughly fine until something has to read all of it at once. The old system tolerated blank fields, three spellings of the same company and dates typed into a notes box. The new one will not, and a migration is the first thing to say so out loud.

Fields with no equivalent

The old CRM had a field the new one does not, or splits into two. Somebody has to decide where that information goes, and if nobody does it lands in a notes field and stops being reportable.

History attached to the wrong thing

Emails on a contact who left, deals against a duplicate company, notes on a record nobody uses. Moved as-is, the relationship arrives in pieces.

Data the old system was quietly fixing

Formats normalised on display rather than on save, required fields enforced by a workflow rather than by the record. None of that comes across, and it is invisible until it is gone.

Things nobody knew were connected

An export feeding a spreadsheet, a sync into finance, a report someone runs monthly. A migration finds these by breaking them, unless it goes looking first.

How we move it

Inventory what is actually there

Objects, fields, record counts, attachments, users, integrations and the things quietly depending on them. You cannot map what nobody has listed.

Agree the mapping, field by field

Every field in the old system gets a destination, a transformation or a decision to leave it behind. That mapping is written down and signed off before anything moves.

Clean on the way through

Duplicates merged, formats standardised, obvious rubbish flagged. Migrating first and cleaning later means doing the work twice and living with the mess in between.

Test load, then check it

A full load into the new system, then counts and samples checked against the source. This is repeated until the numbers match and the records read correctly.

Cut over with a way back

An agreed window, a final delta load, and the old system kept readable until everyone is confident. A migration without a rollback is a bet rather than a plan.

Hand over what changed

A record of the mapping, the transformations and anything left behind, so the decisions are explainable months later.

Moving data out of an on-premise system

Some of the hardest migrations are not between two clouds. They are out of a system sitting on a server in your building, with no modern API and a database nobody has queried in years.

The Flowbird Tunnel exists for that: a secure route from on-premise to cloud, so the records can be read, mapped and moved without exposing the server to the internet or handing a database dump around on a drive.

What you have at the end

The history, still attached

Notes, emails, activities and documents on the record they belong to, so the relationship reads as one story rather than a stack of fragments.

A system that starts clean

The duplicates and contradictions resolved on the way through, rather than inherited on day one and lived with for years.

A mapping you can explain

Every field accounted for, so when someone asks where a number went there is an answer that is not a shrug.

Integrations that still work

The syncs, exports and reports that depended on the old system identified before cutover, and pointed at the new one.

When migration is the right step

Good fit if

  • you are moving between CRMs, or consolidating several into one
  • the data has to arrive with its history rather than as a contact list
  • the old system is on-premise, or has no usable API
  • you have integrations and reports that cannot simply stop
  • you would rather not carry the existing mess across

Not yet if

  • the new system has not been designed, which is discovery first
  • nobody has agreed what the fields are for in the destination
  • the real problem is the data rather than the system, which is cleaning
  • the old system is broken rather than outgrown, which is closer to rescue

Common questions about CRM data migration

Will we lose anything?

Not silently. Anything without a destination in the new system is raised during mapping and becomes your decision rather than an accident. What is deliberately left behind is written down.

How long does a migration take?

The moving is rarely the slow part. Mapping and agreeing decisions is, because it involves people rather than machines, and the inventory step exists so that can be estimated rather than guessed.

Can we keep working during it?

Usually. Most migrations run with a final delta load at cutover so the last few days of activity come across, which means the team keeps using the old system until the switch.

What happens to our integrations?

They are inventoried first, because they are the thing most likely to break quietly. Each one is either rebuilt against the new system, retired deliberately, or flagged as out of scope before cutover.

What if it goes wrong?

The old system stays readable until you are confident, and the load is tested and checked before cutover rather than after. That is what makes it reversible.

Talk to us about moving your data

Tell us what you are moving from, what you are moving to, and what cannot be lost on the way. We will tell you what is involved.

No pressure. No hard sell. Just a clear view of what the move actually entails.