ERP Go-Live Keeps Slipping? Look at Your Data First

When an ERP project runs late, the software is rarely the cause. The trouble is usually the data being moved into it. An ERP brings finance, inventory, purchase, sales, production and HR into one place, but the old data comes from accounting packages, Excel sheets, billing tools and older systems, each with its own codes and formats. These gaps tend to show up close to the deadline.
Seven mistakes that push the date back
- Leaving migration to the last week, with no time to fix what goes wrong.
- Moving everything, including inactive customers, unused vendors and duplicate items.
- Skipping data cleaning, so missing PAN or GSTIN details and wrong units cause invoice and tax errors.
- Having no business owner for each data set.
- Weak mapping between old and new fields.
- Not reconciling totals after each load.
- Picking a cut-over date in the middle of a busy month.
A simple six-step plan
- Scope: list the sources, the masters and transactions to move, and how much history.
- Assign owners: finance for ledgers, stores for items and stock, purchase for vendors, HR for employee records.
- Cleanse: remove duplicates and fill mandatory fields.
- Map and build load templates.
- Run at least two full trial loads and reconcile each one.
- Cut over: freeze the old system, run the final load, reconcile and get sign-off.
Start the data work in month one, alongside configuration. Cleaning data before migration is almost always cheaper than cleaning it after go-live.
Read the full ERP migration guide here: ERP Data Migration Mistakes That Delay Go-Live
Published by Affix Center, a Mumbai-based IT services company. See our data and AI services.
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