ERP Migration Steps and Strategy

As your business scales and becomes more complex, you need technology solutions to support your operations, reporting, teams, and management. In the past, you may have implemented an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that met your needs, managed your complexity, and improved efficiency.

The benefits of your ERP implementation supported your growth. And now, as your requirements have continued to scale, you require a new platform that can handle your evolved complexity. You require an ERP migration when you transition from one ERP system to another.

An ERP migration can bring greater reignition of efficiency improvement as it previously did. You can take advantage of new automation and technology frameworks to eliminate organisational pain points and focus on more impactful tasks. However, while you have gone through an ERP implementation before, a migration project brings additional considerations and strategic options for your organisation.

Key Challenges in ERP Migration

It is normal for your efficiency, productivity, and profitability to stagnate or even regress once the business reaches a certain size. The existing processes and systems you rely on can only support your organisation up to a certain point. Investing in an ERP migration is a journey your business needs to take to improve efficiency and continue its growth.

However, there will be differences compared to when you originally moved from an off-the-shelf accounting system and implemented your first ERP:

• Data migration – different systems have different database structures; mapping these two databases accurately and comprehensively is a significant undertaking,
• Organisational complexity – the new ERP system needs to be better able to handle the complexity that evolved during the lifetime of the old system; it is likely that your ERP shaped your evolution as much as you shaped it with customisations and integrations. Unravelling that bond can be challenging.
• Hardware and software requirements – with the rising prevalence of cloud-based systems, a change in ERP systems can also necessitate a change in hardware and support requirements to maintain security.
• New processes and workflows – Your team will be familiar with your old system, the way it worked, and how it didn’t – including how to work around any limitations; however, this will all change with a new system as your team starts the training and adoption process again.

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Building a Strong ERP Migration Strategy

A smooth transition to your new ERP system relies on sound strategy, the right partner, a strong focus on efficiency improvement, and good project management.

Understand your Business Objectives

An ERP migration is much less of a revolution for your organisation than the initial implementation. In an ERP migration, you must clearly define why you need to migrate to a new system:

• Do you need better reporting?
• Is compliance an issue?
• Do you want to streamline processes and operations across multiple entities?
• Do you need flexibility and accessibility in the cloud?
• Is your current system compromising your ability to provide excellent customer service?

Aligning your migration strategy with your business goals lets you focus on the specific need for migration – not just migrating for migration’s sake. Many established products are still fit-for-purpose, and any investment in a new system without overall efficiency improvement is suboptimal. Clarity in your migration objective avoids costly missteps, ensures the new system fits your future, not your past, and simplifies your decision as to when to implement the new ERP solution.

Conduct a Thorough Process Audit

Just as your requirements and customisations have shaped your current system, so your current system has shaped your processes and overall efficiency. The unique qualities and functionality of your system may have shifted your process to cover software limitations.

A migration is the time to reflect on your process as a whole, not just as an exercise to rebuild it in a new system. Recognise what worked because of the system, and what can be improved by a change to make efficiency gains and streamline the migration process. A comprehensive audit of your existing workflows, reports, data structures, and system dependencies helps you distinguish between what should be carried forward, what should be redesigned, what can be retired altogether, and what could be supplemented with a best-of-breed system such as a CRM. This audit creates a blueprint for a cleaner, more efficient ERP environment in the cloud—one that removes outdated workarounds and positions you for growth.

Engage Key Stakeholders Early

Change will always affect many areas and departments across your organisation. There will be resistance to change as you modify the way your team works. Engaging key team members across your organisation not only streamlines the migration process, but can also help you uncover hidden process knowledge, anticipate user needs, and build internal champions who support adoption. When your team are actively involved in designing the future system, they become its strongest advocates.

Define Requirements and Success Metrics

Before you begin configuration or data migration, you need a clear understanding of your must-haves, your nice-to-haves, and your red flags. This outline shapes your new system design and build, so that you have maximum efficiency improvement when you go live. It also simplifies the process of choosing between different types of ERP systems.

Tracking success metrics is a key part of system migration. Compare a before and after snapshot of key performance indicators to evaluate the success of your migration. This includes:

• Functional requirements (e.g., multi-entity consolidation, automated billing),
• Technical requirements (e.g., integration with existing platforms),
• Security and compliance needs (e.g., data sovereignty in Australia/New Zealand), and
• Service metrics (e.g., monthly close times, customer response times, user adoption rates).

Furthermore, a strong understanding of your KPIs from the current system will better qualify the new system before you begin the migration. Use the pre-sales demonstrations to see how the new system will tangibly improve efficiency by comparing processes and reviewing against your KPIs.

Plan for Risks and Contingencies

Even though you have navigated an ERP implementation before, success is not guaranteed the next time around. Even the best migration strategies are open to risks. A trusted and experienced migration partner can help you mitigate these risks and deliver a system design and build to meet your ongoing requirements.

This includes strategies to navigate the three common types of risk:

• Software risk – will the new system do what we need it to do?
• Implementer risk – does the implementing team have the skills required to fulfil the sales team’s promise and unlock the potential of the software? Most software vendors have a partner channel as they do not possess the required expertise to implement their own software.
• Self-inflicted risk – can your own team devote the appropriate resources to the implementation?

Like any complex project, it is far better to do it once and do it right. Money and time spent on rectification far exceed the cost of doing it right the first time.

Phases of an ERP Migration Project

Kilimanjaro Consulting has designed and tested our structured migration methodology to eliminate risk and successfully deliver a new system that meets your requirements. We take into account your current, future, and ideal states to give you maximum benefit from new functionality while also streamlining the migration and user adoption processes.

Our Migration methodology is made up of 6 key stages:

• Risk Assessment – identify and plan for any hurdles that might affect a successful migration,
• System Design – collaborate with our expert migration consultants to best fit the system to your unique requirements,
• Build – our team builds and configures the system based on the scope of the design, while also beginning data migration and workflow testing,
• User Acceptance Training (UAT) and Testing – take advantage of a fully operational sandbox environment to test and become familiar with the new system before you go live under the guidance of your migration consultant,
• Go-live – commence operation in your new system with reconciled accounts,
• Post-migration support – our team will be there to support you through your first months and beyond to ensure user adoption while introducing your options for ongoing support and training when you need it.

Just because the phases of the migration are complete does not mean it is the end of your technology journey. Your organisation will continue to evolve, grow, and become more complex. A scalable, modern system with additional modules and the ability to integrate with a range of third-party add-on products is well-suited to handle this growth and complexity. Our team can help you further customise the system to reflect your changing requirements.

ERP Migration Done Right with Kilimanjaro Consulting

Kilimanjaro Consulting are proven, expert ERP migration consultants. We are specialists in migrating larger, more complex organisations onto MYOB Acumatica – a modern, cloud-based ERP platform that lets you manage your entire organisation from one place. Our clients have successfully migrated to MYOB Acumatica from a range of other ERP systems:

• MYOB Exo
• MYOB Greentree
• Attache
• Sybiz Vision
• Sage 300/Sage 200
• Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains)
• Netsuite
• Pronto
• Ostendo
• Infor ERP
• MYOB AccountRight
• Xero

Our structured migration methodology minimises risk and ensures the design of your new system recognises your current processes and facilitates future growth. We pride ourselves on the skill and experience of our team. They provide 360-degree consulting, including MYOB migration, support services, integration and training for organisations across Australia and New Zealand. Our core purpose is to improve business efficiency for our clients through the use of clever, innovative, and proven technology.

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Migrating from MYOB Exo to MYOB Acumatica

Kilimanjaro Consulting are MYOB ERP specialists. Our expert understanding of both MYOB Exo and MYOB Acumatica mean we are the best possible partner to migrate your organisation between the two systems. One of the keys to starting off on the best foot with a new ERP is having the right data, reconciled and available in your new system.

Typically, this is achieved by importing opening balances for your key accounts, so that the old system can be closed and the new one opened with the same information. This is good as a baseline for migration, as you will start at the same place you left off in the old system. However, you will lose immediate visibility over your historical data and trends and may need to access your old system to dig out this information.

Instead, our team has developed a tool to facilitate rapid imports of more complete data sets from MYOB Exo into MYOB Acumatica. This relies on our expertise with MYOB Exo’s underlying SQL database structure, properly accessing and preparing your data for migration. Depending on the complexity and the structure of your accounts, this tool can save days of work from both your team and the implementer, cleaning, reconciling, and processing data for import, with savings potentially in the tens of thousands.

Next Steps

The Kilimanjaro Consulting team is ready and waiting to help your organisation migrate your business processes into the cloud. Our goal is to help you improve efficiency through the clever use of innovative, proven, and creative technology. An ERP migration is a strong step towards using a more modern platform that can support your business for many years to come.

Talk to our team about your migration strategy and putting the steps in place to migrate your business management to MYOB Acumatica. Email sales@kilimanjaro-consulting.com or call 1300 857 464 (AU) or 0800 436 774 (NZ).