This article addresses the need to access data from your legacy ERP system after migrating to another. In the article, we refer to a client company by the nickname of “Wectechny” to give an example of a possible use case.
Challenge: migrating without losing access to old data
Your company’s management decided to let go of your current ERP system and start using another. As you take this major step, you need a plan on how to keep the access to data that was not converted or will not be converted from your old to your new ERP system in the migration process. The plan is not needed only for the sake of your company’s data but also because, in most countries, there are laws that require you to keep certain data accessible for a specific amount of years in your archive. So, what do you do when leaving your ERP?
Additional Challenges
To figure out, let’s first dig deeper into the possible challenges when it comes to unconverted data:
- Poor Service: losing immediate access to data concerning products sold with years-long guarantees leaves you incapable of providing efficient service when approached by customers for questions or support.
- Failure to abide by the law: given that, in most countries, there are rules and laws that require you to keep particular data on-demand, losing access to such information risks your business to face legal charges at any time.
- Lack of evidence: in case your company faces legal charges by a client or a different party, and you lost access to relevant documentation that could serve as your company’s evidence, you may be left in a weak position legally.
- Narrow-scoped research: when using data for business research, losing access to old or unconverted data brings about narrow-scoped research resulting in poor data analysis with decreased accuracy. Such results are relied on at your company to make critical decisions.
When aware of such challenges, you realize that access to old data at all times may be critical.
So, again, what do you do when leaving your current ERP?
Answer: guarantee access to your old ERP database at all times.
When leaving your ERP system, you will stop paying subscription fees that offer you the tools to access data, print reports, extract data, etc… Losing these tools is like losing the keys to your garage, where you stored your old and rarely used belongings. You are left with a database full of information yet without an easy or fast way to access it or extract data from it.
So, what else can serve as an “alternative door” to your old database?
A reporting system that can access your old ERP system at all times and is well equipped to deal with it.
Let’s try and explain this through a USE CASE:
Wectechny is transferring from Baan to SAP as its new ERP. But, before doing that, its team needs to make sure that, somehow, they will keep having access to their old ERP database.
When Wectechny approached a consulting group, they were recommended to implement an affordable reporting system with the following abilities:
- Understands how to handle Baan tables and companies, including access to the Baan data dictionary that explains the fields and tables. (Necessary since Wectechny will have less access to people who know Baan inside the company in the years to come.) For more, see this.
- Has strong capabilities to export data to Excel files. (To enable future use of old data for data analysis in business research and more.) For more, see this.
- Offers the option of generating reports from other systems like the new ERP system, for example.
The use of such a tool would include benefits like
- All-time access to the old data allowing better and faster customer service
- Cut down the hours spent on IT support hours for the sole purpose of data extraction and preparation, which means fewer expenses for the company
- A faster migration process that doesn’t include the transfer of ALL data.
Our Solution
B2Win Suite is a solution that offers the tools to deal with all the needs and problems mentioned above.
(Insert video)
And, as we mentioned at the beginning of the article, the case above is similar to one of our clients’ stories. So here’s a quote from their testimony:
Client
“We left Baan/Infor 3 years ago – and migrated to SAP. We regularly need to extract data from BaanIV, but only for usage in other systems (most often in SAP). We do not have a Maintenance agreement but need the ability to extract data” (Manufacturer in the Nordic region).”
Continuously evolving…
As a reporting system, we are aware that there are complex needs after migrating from one ERP to another. That’s why we continuously adapt ourselves to such evolving needs and provide both software with one-on-one services!
To see NAZDAQ’s product for accessing historical data in Baan after migrating to a new ERP system, please visit B2Data – B2Win Suite
