Adapting to the needs of customers, keeping operational costs low and storing data securely and complicity are some of the factors that became a catalyst for digital transformation.

Companies are finding their current CRM systems and ERPs are too outdated to meet their growing business requirements. This leads to data breaches, a negative customer experience and divided departments across a workplace.

The good news is you don’t have to become a victim to outdated technology. Here are four key steps to follow to prepare for a seamless migration and ensure you are well-equipped to digitally transform – and grow – your business.

Understand the Goal of the Migration

Why are you doing this migration?

Is the purpose to reduce operational costs? Do you want to automate and streamline parts of your business? You may even be looking to centralise communications across the organisation or simply provide a better overall customer experience.

While these may all be benefits of a new or updated system, the primary reason will help dictate which system you choose and the KPI metrics you’ll set to measure the success of the project.

Define Migration Plan

Once you’re agreed on the reasons for the migration, a comprehensive plan can be defined.

Migrating legacy systems to cloud gives you unique capabilities, enhanced functionalities, and more productivity. Therefore, you should outline how the benefits will meet your goals and map out how you will measure these.

During the migration of legacy systems to cloud, the migration project should have clear objectives, motivation, scope and limitations.

Consider costs and ROI

Having a strong plan in place – and a clear understanding of your goals – will help you identify the costs of the project.

Cost is sometimes one of the biggest issues to overcome when justifying a major IT transformation project. If you don’t have a full view of the current model, and the benefits of ROI, it can be hard to put the migration project to key stakeholders.

Work closely with the vendor at the development stage to establish a solid ROI calculation. Having a clear picture of your costs (including maintenance costs, ongoing support, etc) will only benefit you in the long run.

IT projects can over-run or go over budget, so always allow scope for project and cost creep.

Migration Strategy

You now need to select your migration strategy. There are three main ways: Lift and Shift, Application Evolution, or Application Re-Architecting.

Lift and Shift

Lift and shift migrations copy everything to the cloud precisely as is. It doesn’t require a lot of work to migrate an application, but it wastes resources and costs more to operate. You’ll likely be left paying for data you’re not using and won’t need.

Application Evolution

In application evolution, you classify pieces of the application to the cloud. This method allows users to migrate to the cloud in chunks, rather than all at once. One drawback is that this might cost more to operate: however, it frees up more storage space in your system.

Application Re-Architecting

This is a method of breaking down applications and rebuilding them in a more scalable, modern design. This isn’t a complete rebuild, instead eliminating code that limits your agility and subsequently improving your functionality.

This method works best for applications that are business-relevant and require customisation.

The main goals of re-architecting are to take advantage of cloud-native capabilities. This means breaking down the application and rebuilding it in a service-orientated, scalable design.

This requires a thorough understanding of the cloud platform and the application in depth.

Run a pilot Migration

A pilot – or test – migration is one of the most important parts of the project.

PSP-IT invests a lot of time on the test phases before go-live.

A pilot migration allows you to test the application and see how users interact with the new system. It’s an opportunity to identify any snags or amendments that are needed to improve the intuitiveness of the system. Yes, they may be time-consuming, however it’s a low-risk way to find any potential before you start the migration.

Migrate your legacy application

You’ve planned, prepared and tested your migration, so you should be ready to make that final step and start migrating.

Here’s two important things to remember;

• Back up: it’s absolutely vital you back up all your data before migrating your legacy. Just to ensure you lose anything during the migration.
• Testing: Post-migration testing is important. Ensure all the data has successfully migrated and check both the security and all users can access everything they need.

A lot goes into an application migration, in particular cost, resources ad time. While you can do the research yourself, it isn’t worth the risk if you don’t have the right expertise.

Even if you have an in-house IT staff, they may not have the expertise or experience to ensure a successful transition. Getting expert help from an outsourced provider could be more beneficial and protect you from major problems or excess downtime.

Migrate your legacy to the cloud with PSP IT

PSP IT has worked with clients from a range of sectors – including chartered institutes, finance, solicitors, aerospace, supply chain management and membership – to successfully migrate data from a legacy systems to a modernised and improved system.

Our team has over 120 years’ combined experience, meaning we understand the major pitfalls when undertaking such a large project. And we can identify mistakes before the escalate.

We also provide ongoing legacy system support and modernisation, so you can get the most out of your investment.

Providing our clients with value for money is one of our core values, and our customer care team guide you every step of the way.

Email: letstalk@psp-it.co.uk or email 01775 722377