If you are planning to migrate your company’s ACT! data into a CRM system, there are a number of questions that you can ask yourself as you start to plan a data migration. Coming up with answers to these questions can make your ACT! data conversion a smoother experience.
Here’s a list of the more common questions that might be asked when an organization is planning to convert data.
- How many active users do we have in ACT!?
- Will all these users be licensed users in CRM?
- How many inactive users do we have in ACT! for which we want to preserve Contact and/or History association in a CRM system?
- Approximately how many Contact records do we have in ACT!?
- Are we using Secondary Contacts in ACT!? If yes, to what extent are they being used?
- Are we using Company records in ACT! and if so, are we using them consistently?
- Are we using Groups in ACT! and if so, how many of them to we need to preserve? (It can be a difficult task to migrate Groups that are not query-based, as most CRM systems don’t allow for ad hoc group membership)
- Do we need Notes migrated? If yes, approximately how many Notes records do we have in our ACT! database?
- Do we need History migrated? If so, approximately how many History records do we have in our ACT! database?
- Do we want to migrate all Notes and History or will we have a cutoff date? (it often makes sense to exclude History records that are more than a few years old)
- Do we want to filter out specific types of History records during conversion, such as mail merges or mass emails?
- Do we need Activities migrated? (unless there are a large number of scheduled activities, it’s often not worth the time and effort to migrate these)
- Do we need user-defined and/or custom fields migrated? If so, approximately how many user-defined and/or custom fields do we have in our ACT! database?
- Are there any fields that we aren’t using and that therefore should not be migrated?
- Do we have any large pick lists that should be changed into lookups in a CRM system? (it often makes sense to change a large pick list into a lookup on a related table or object)
- Do we need any data normalized from a series of flat, duplicated fields into a Related List in a CRM system? (a major benefit to a CRM system is that it has a relational structure)
- Do we want to redefine the way in which we use any of the existing fields? (are there free form text fields that should become pick lists or lookups?)
- Do we need Opportunities migrated?
- Do we need Attachments migrated? If so, are all of our attachments in a single, shared folder — or are they in a variety of local and network folders?
Considering questions like these — up front — can help your organization get on a path toward a successful ACT! data conversion.
