If companies want to overcome the pitfalls of a potentially prolonged and painful migration, knowing the incumbent system, algorithms and having a very good handle on how a migration will effect corporate strategy is a must. Some of the questions you want to ask yourself and your new provider as part of a well-planned and successful migration are:

How many migrations have you had that failed?
What is your strategy for our success?
How is the data being migrated? (Lazy Migration, Continuous Migration or incremental migration)
How much do you know about the incumbent system?
What level of cooperation will you get from the incumbent? How will it affect the timeline?
How long will the migration take?
What is the strategy to keep the project on time if there are "change orders?"
Do I have the expertise in house to manage the migration?
Can I allocate resources from my pool of talent to focus on this project for its entire duration?
How are you assured the conversion/migration was successful? Meaning, every claim, policy, etc… was migrated properly?
What's the strategy to migrate your users and business processes?
Do you plan to update your business processes to take advantage of new technology? Automate manual processes?

Try to get a full customer list from the potential provider. Don't let them "cherry pick" who you speak to. Have your team fully document the results in a risk assessment and then weigh the chances of success or failure using a point system of high to low risks.

Special Reports /

The art of data migrations

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