Excitement, expectation, motivation and passion are all feelings associated with kicking off a new ERPEnterprise Resource Planning software is used by businesses to manage day-to-day activities. implementation project. It is also understandable why these feelings often dissipate when the subject of ‘data’ comes up. However, a failure to prioritise, understand or even acknowledge data could create serious issues later down the line and, in the most extreme cases, result in a failed implementation.
Data activities can, and should, be one of the first streams of work initiated by customers. Some of the key considerations and activities should include:
Identifying your data – The majority of business users are consumers of data, as such they often don’t acknowledge the underlying sources/process drivers. Knowing what data you have, what creates its, where else it is used and how is it structured is one of the critical first steps for any data stream within a project.
Mapping your data sources – Legacy finance systems are often in house/on premise solutions where the customers own and can readily access their data. However, it is highly likely that over time tactical solutions have been deployed resulting in data being stored in 3rd party databases that may require access requests to be approved and/or have limitations in place in how to access/query that data. Understanding this dependency, timelines for access/extraction, and visibility of that data will be key when planning the ETLETL (Extract, Transform, Load) is a process that extracts data from sources, transforms it for analysis, and loads it into a database. (Extract, Transform and Load) activities for your data migration.
Cleansing your data – Changing an ERPEnterprise Resource Planning software is used by businesses to manage day-to-day activities. or finance system is not a recurring business activity so it is highly likely that, after having your current solution for a lengthy period of time, your data structures, formats etc have changed to adapt to your business needs. Identifying legacy data items no longer required and preparing consistent, clean and complete data sets is an absolute must when you are seeking to migrate to a new system.
Allocating data owners – Once you have an understanding of your data flows it is strongly recommended that you specify data owners. Business users who regularly interact and consume the data are ideal candidates. These data owners will act as one of the primary contacts when discussing the ‘to-be’ business processes in the future solution. Specifying/validating transformation rules, approving data extracts/imports, defining test criteria and confirming successful data migration will often be responsibilities of the respective data owners.
Technology/solution agnostic project activities like those listed above can be easy wins when it comes to preparing your business for a transformation programme.
These items are by no means an extensive list of data activities undertaken during a project implementation. However, with the consideration that a critical part of any data stream is to ‘Get your data house in order’ they should all be items given strong focus and consideration as part of any ERPEnterprise Resource Planning software is used by businesses to manage day-to-day activities. implementation project initiation.