Consumer Products Industry Challenges for 2025 and Beyond

Consumer Products Industry Challenges for 2025 and Beyond

As we entered 2025, fme’s leadership reached out to our connections working in consumer products industries to discuss their top-level concerns for the coming year and beyond. Some were our clients in past transformation initiatives, and others are industry experts that have been leading discussions on emerging digital strategies for many years. We specifically focused our interviews on experienced executives that have been working R&D departments for 20-30 years or more. These leaders have been through several technology transition cycles, so they have seen, heard, and worked through the adoption of ‘hot new solutions’ and experienced both the triumphs and frustrations that came with each.

The points below are from one of our conversations with an executive with 30+ years working at a personal care company with over €10 Billion revenue a year. Through their career in product development, portfolio management, regulatory compliance and more, they gained an extensive understanding of the value, requirements and issues that IT and operations teams face both day-to-day, and over extended timeframes. We heard similar comments in several of these interviews, and have been hearing the same from our long-time clients in the highly regulated pharmaceutical, finance, and manufacturing industries.

Common Challenge and Limitations

This is just a high-level preview; if you’d like a deeper discussion or want to share your perspective, reach out using the contact form below. We look forward to connecting and exchanging insights.

Data Silos and Platform Integration

This should come as no surprise to anyone working with digital technology over the last 20 years and will most likely continue to be an issue for the next 20. Every company has disconnected repositories of data that have accumulated over years of work and internal initiatives. Some are still effective and valuable, and some are less important to today’s business strategies. Historic data can still be useful and frequently is required for compliance but may be stored in legacy systems and formats that aren’t aligned with modern solution formats and data structures. As repositories age, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine which information should be archived, and which should be migrated for use with new tools.

IT & System Infrastructure Conflicts

Every business has multiple IT systems that are the backbone of daily business. ERP systems for operations, communication and document applications like Microsoft Office or Google Workspace, R&D infrastructure, as well as quality and possibly clinical platforms and more. In a large company, these applications have a long history of use and evolution of processes. Some are too deeply embedded to be easily replaced by a full-suite solution, and others are not built to serve the unique needs of the consumer products industry. They may get close, but can still fall short in critical areas, requiring additional integration work.

Increasing Global Regulations

Across the globe, there are an increasing catalog of regulations and requirements that consumer products companies must prove compliance. It’s essential to manage the requirements that apply within individual regions as individual products travel through their manufacturing, distribution, sale and use by the consumer. Each company needs to understand their unique needs, and ensure they select systems that can support their business processes.

Migrating Data Requires Migration Experts

Selecting and implementing a new tool or platform requires a deep and detailed knowledge of the data, metadata, and structures of the legacy data. Firms often plan to utilize their in-house IT team for migrations, assuming they will have complete knowledge of existing repositories, but from our experience, that is rarely the case. Few in-house engineers have been involved in the set-up and maintenance of every digital tool that has been used in a company’s history, and even fewer have a detailed understanding of the daily processes, workflows and workarounds that have evolved to meet business goals. AI-powered solutions are showing promise, but they still need detailed verification to ensure complete accuracy and minimize risks of compliance issues.

Best-of-Breed vs Full-Suite Solutions

The final challenge that many consumer products firms face is whether to take a modular, best-of-breed approach, or to invest in a complete digital transformation to full-suite solution. This is a challenging decision since it is difficult to have clear and complete details on company-wide processes and workflows and their accompanying data and documents. As mentioned above, it is common to have IT and system infrastructure conflicts that can limit or completely prevent the integration of data that would allow the removal of a legacy solution, or the adoption of a new full-suite platform.

How fme Supports Consumer Product Migrations

Despite the above challenges, there is exceptional value and ROI to be gained by taking advantage of the power and features of modern technology solutions. To be sure, they are not simply doing the same old tasks with a different colored button; they are faster, more efficient, and have advanced capabilities that were not considered 10 years ago but have become a requirement to stay competitive in today’s market. This is where fme’s proven methodologies, industry expertise, and advanced tools are invaluable. Through our 30 years of migrating business-critical data in the most complex and highly regulated industries, we have an unparalleled understanding of the deep-level connections and data requirements that fuel any information management platform. When partnering with fme for the migration of your data and documents you get: 

  • Proven Track Record: fme has successfully completed complex data migrations for leading companies in complex, highly regulated industries like life sciences and consumer goods, demonstrating reliability and expertise.

  • Industry-Specific Knowledge: fme understands the unique data challenges in the cosmetic industry, including regulatory requirements, proprietary formulations, and supply chain complexities.

  • Advanced Technology: fme leverages cutting-edge migration accelerators that automate critical tasks, ensuring accuracy and efficiency.

  • Collaborative Approach: fme works closely with your team throughout the migration process, providing clear communication on our best practices and how they can be incorporated into your migration journey. We also proactively advise on additional ways to de-risk your program when applicable.

  • Focus on Quality and Compliance: Every migration is executed with a focus on preserving data integrity, ensuring compliance, and achieving business objectives.

Contact Us to Discuss Your Challenges

We understand that every business faces its own set of challenges and requirements. As the leading migration solution partner with hundreds of successful projects, we have deep expertise in recognizing the pitfalls and opportunities that can make or break a digital transformation initiative. Reach out today to discuss your challenges and goals. Let’s work together to ensure a smooth, successful migration: one that maximizes the value of your business platforms and sets you up for long-term success.

 


 

About the Author – Ian Crone

Global Life Science Leader | Innovator | Inspirational Team Builder | Mentor | UDI & Medical Device Expert | IDMP | Data Migration

Ian Crone is an industry expert with over 17 years of experience in the cosmetic industry—from the laboratory bench to global manufacturing operations. With a proven track record of delivering success across the entire product lifecycle, his scope of understanding seamlessly bridges innovative R&D with large-scale production. Recognized as a thought leader in Regulatory Information Management (RIM), Unique Device Identification (UDI), and IDMP standards, Ian excels at navigating complex regulatory landscapes while driving strategic, compliant solutions.

Drawing on extensive experience in the cosmetic sector, Ian has honed expertise in selecting and implementing cutting-edge systems that ensure operational excellence and full regulatory alignment. As a seasoned data migration expert, Ian has led high-stakes initiatives that optimize processes and safeguard data integrity. Known for his ability to mentor and inspire global teams, he is dedicated to delivering innovative, client-centric solutions that yield measurable impact. Whether driving regulatory compliance, streamlining operations, or managing global teams, Ian is committed to excellence and innovation that make a tangible difference for his clients.

Moving Beyond Legacy: How fme Delivers a Proven Path to Veeva Vault Quality

Moving Beyond Legacy: How fme Delivers a Proven Path to Veeva Vault Quality

Quality is the foundation of everything in life sciences—it ensures product safety, regulatory compliance, and ultimately, patient well-being. Yet, many companies are still relying on legacy QMS platforms built for a different era. These systems require extensive maintenance, outdated infrastructure, and manual workarounds, creating silos that limit real-time insights and slow down quality processes. Instead of enabling proactive quality management, they introduce operational inefficiencies and compliance risks. As regulatory expectations evolve, the industry is shifting toward connected, digital quality ecosystems—where agility, compliance, and informed decision-making are no longer optional but essential.

Why Veeva Vault Quality?

Veeva Vault Quality provides a modern, scalable solution that eliminates fragmented systems and manual handoffs, ensuring end-to-end quality management. From document control and training to deviations, CAPAs, change control, audits, and supplier quality, Veeva offers seamless traceability across all quality processes, helping life sciences companies accelerate product development and manufacturing while maintaining compliance. But choosing the right platform is only part of the equation, executing the migration workstream effectively is critical.

The Reality of Migrating to a New QMS

Migrating from a legacy, highly customized QMS to a configurable, low or no-code digital solution is never as simple as just moving data. While buzzwords may make it sound easy, the reality is that every migration comes with complexities, some small but most significant.

Legacy QMS platforms have been embedded in business operations for years (sometimes decades) and customized to fit unique workflows, integrations, and automation rules. These configurations don’t always translate cleanly into a new system designed around industry best practices rather than one organization’s unique way of working. And some of these are truly unique.

For life sciences companies, the risks of getting this wrong are high. Quality systems aren’t just about efficiency; they’re the backbone of regulatory compliance. Every deviation, CAPA, audit trail, and training record must be migrated accurately and remain fully intact for regulatory inspections. For companies managing a high volume of complaints, visibility into what happened, how it was investigated, and how it was corrected is essential. Compliance isn’t something that can be recreated after the fact: it must be preserved throughout the migration.

And then there’s data complexity. Legacy QMS platforms often contain years of unstructured records, inconsistent metadata, and outdated information mixed in with critical, real-time quality data. A simple lift-and-shift isn’t an option—without careful mapping and transformation, organizations risk losing valuable insights or, worse, compromising compliance.

Beyond the technology, people and processes play a critical role. Quality teams have spent years working within the legacy system, and the thought of starting over in a new one can create real resistance. Even when the new system is objectively better, users often push back if they feel it disrupts their daily operations, especially if they haven’t been actively engaged in designing the future-state process. Change management isn’t just about training on a new interface, it’s about ensuring that users understand how the new system supports their responsibilities and makes their jobs easier.

And let’s not forget integrations. QMS platforms don’t operate in isolation; they connect to ERP systems, regulatory platforms, MES, training systems, and more. If these connections aren’t carefully managed, a migration intended to improve efficiency can introduce new bottlenecks and risks.

Why fme Is the Only Partner To Trust With This Critical Workstream

This is exactly where fme thrives. We’ve spent years working with global life sciences companies to execute highly regulated, complex data and document migrations, ensuring that critical business processes remain uninterrupted and compliance isn’t compromised. We don’t just migrate data and documents: we assess, classify, transform, and verify it, ensuring that what arrives in the new system is clean, complete, and audit-ready.

Unlike general IT consultancies that offer migration as just a big part of their bag of tricks, fme specializes in highly regulated data and document migrations. We’ve led some of the largest, most complex migrations in the industry, working with pharmaceutical and biotech leaders to modernize their quality, regulatory, and clinical systems without disruption. Our experience gives us the foresight to proactively mitigate risks before they become obstacles, whether it’s aligning legacy data structures with modern regulatory requirements, handling complex document relationships, or ensuring seamless integrations with connected systems.

We combine our deep industry expertise with migration-center®, a Veeva product-certified migration technology, to drive transformation, execution, and validation with speed and precision. While technology alone isn’t enough, migration-center enables us to execute migrations efficiently, with full traceability and regulatory alignment, ensuring that:

  • Data integrity is maintained. Every piece of critical information remains accurate, complete, and compliant throughout the transition.
  • Business disruption is minimized. Our structured, real-world-tested approach ensures that operations continue seamlessly while data moves.
  • Regulatory compliance is preserved. We ensure all migrated data adheres to industry-specific guidelines, keeping your organization inspection-ready.
  • Data usability is improved. We don’t just transfer data; we structure and optimize it for maximum usability in Veeva Vault.

Quality isn’t just what we help our clients maintain: it’s how fme operates. Our ISO/IEC 27001-certified QMS and ISO 9001:2015 certification reflect our internal commitment to excellence, compliance, and security. The world’s leading life sciences companies trust fme to handle their most critical quality document and data migrations because we bring the right expertise, the right technology, and the right mindset to every project.

Take the Next Step Toward a Seamless, Compliant, and Efficient Quality Migration

Your quality data and documents are too important to leave to chance. Download our datasheet to explore fme’s end-to-end Veeva Vault capabilities and see how our expertise can support your transition. Ready to discuss your specific challenges? Connect with our experts today—we’ll work with you to develop a migration strategy that ensures data integrity, regulatory compliance, and business continuity.

Let’s get your digital transformation right the first time. It’s fme you love to work with.

Join fme in Boston at the Veeva Summit: R&D and Quality

Join fme in Boston at the Veeva Summit: R&D and Quality

The 2024 Veeva Summit: R&D and Quality is in Boston in a few weeks and fme is honored to be one of the few certified partners to have been selected as a Gold sponsor. We look forward to sharing our experience and strategies with the Veeva community again this year. We cordially invite you to join us to network, share strategies and learn more about the capabilities of the Veeva platform.

Veeva Summit

With over 2,000 life science industry professionals attending, the Veeva Summit in Boston is the best place to get first-hand details on today’s most effective R&D and Quality strategies and solutions for content management. fme is a certified partner supporting the Veeva platform for Life Sciences firms through selection, migration and maintenance, so we’ll be sharing our proven methodologies to best configure, utilize, and support this powerful platform and leverage its capabilities to achieve business goals.

Each year, the Veeva Summit deliver unique value to attendees:

  • Gain insights into the latest features and enhancements within Veeva’s powerful platform, and how it can help you achieve your business goals.
  • Understand how fme can help plan and optimize your Veeva environment, ensuring seamless integration, operation, and maximum ROI.
  • Exchange ideas, network, and learn from industry professionals to help you stay ahead of industry trends and competition.

Why Migrate to Veeva Vault?

Throughout the Veeva Summit, clients and partners will be sharing their knowledge and strategies for planning, integrating, utilizing and maintaining the platform. Veeva Vault offers a unified suite of applications designed to manage the critical content and data in life sciences. By centralizing information across quality, regulatory, and clinical operations, Veeva Vault enhances collaboration, improves compliance, and accelerates time to market. However, the migration to such a robust system is not without its challenges. Moving large volumes of data from legacy systems, databases, and various content repositories requires expertise, precision, and a deep understanding of the unique needs of the life sciences industry.

fme at Veeva Summit

With decades of experience in the life sciences sector, fme has established itself as a leader in data and document migration services and is your trusted partner for Veeva Vault migrations. Drawing on my personal experience in migrating legacy data and documents, I understand firsthand the challenges clients face—from navigating complex regulatory requirements to ensuring data accuracy and integrity throughout the migration process. This insight drives our commitment to making your migration to Veeva Vault as seamless as possible.

Industry Expertise That Sets Us Apart

At fme, we bring extensive experience in the life sciences industry to every migration project. Having personally worked on numerous migrations, I know fme’s expert team understands the intricate challenges that come with moving critical data and documents. Our team have extensive knowledge of the stringent regulatory requirements that govern the industry, including GxP compliance, and we ensure that every step of the migration process meets these standards. Our expertise spans quality management, regulatory affairs, and clinical operations, making us uniquely qualified to handle the nuanced needs of your migration to Veeva Vault.

Comprehensive Migration Services

Our migration services are comprehensive, covering every phase of the migration journey. We start by thoroughly assessing your existing systems and data to understand the migration scope and identify potential challenges. Leveraging our many years of migration experience, we collaborate with you to create a migration plan that aligns with your business objectives and addresses concerns upfront. We then meticulously map your data to the Veeva Vault structure, ensuring all necessary transformations are applied for accuracy and readiness. Utilizing our specialized tool, migration-center, we handle the extraction, transformation, and loading of data from various source systems into Veeva Vault, with rigorous validation processes to meet all regulatory requirements. Post-migration, we provide ongoing support to ensure your Veeva Vault environment functions smoothly, offering training, troubleshooting, and customization as needed, backed by my experience in anticipating and resolving issues.

migration-center: The Power Behind Our Migrations.

migration-center, our purpose-built migration tool, is designed to simplify even the most complex migrations. Capable of supporting over 250 source-to-target system combinations, migration-center seamlessly handles content extraction and migration to Veeva Vault from databases, file shares, cloud platforms, and legacy applications. This flexibility ensures that no matter where your data currently resides, we can migrate it efficiently and accurately to Veeva Vault.

Tailored Solutions for Unique Needs

We understand that every organization is different, with unique challenges and requirements. That’s why we don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. Having personally navigated various migration scenarios, I know how important it is to tailor our services to meet your specific needs. Whether you’re migrating a small dataset or a complex array of content types, we have the expertise and tools to deliver a solution that works for you.

A Commitment to Compliance and Quality

In the life sciences industry, compliance isn’t optional—it’s essential. We are experts in ensuring that your migration process adheres to the strictest regulatory standards. From GxP compliance to meticulous documentation, we leave nothing to chance. Our team works closely with your quality assurance teams to validate every aspect of the migration, giving you peace of mind that your data is accurate, complete, and ready for regulatory scrutiny.

Why Choose fme for Your Veeva Vault Migration?

Migrating to Veeva Vault is a significant undertaking, but with fme as your partner, it doesn’t have to be daunting. We combine deep industry knowledge, cutting-edge tools, and a client-centric approach to deliver migration services that are seamless, secure, and compliant. My personal experience in the life sciences industry has equipped me with the insights necessary to anticipate challenges and guide you through a successful migration.

Contact Us Today!

Ready to make the move to Veeva Vault? Contact us today to learn how fme can support your migration and help you unlock the full potential of your content management system. We’ll schedule a discovery meeting with our Veeva experts to discuss your current challenges and introduce the range of possibilities and next steps to accelerate your journey to success.

Not Attending Veeva Summit?

Not attending the Veeva Summit in Boston this year? That’s an even better reason to contact us to schedule a personalized presentation. We’ll share the newest updates and announcements from Veeva, and discuss solutions for your short- and long-term challenges.

Planning Successful Data Migrations through Mergers and Acquisitions

Planning Successful Data Migrations through Mergers and Acquisitions

In today’s business environment, mergers and acquisitions have become increasingly frequent. Large and medium size corporations acquire firms for many reasons: to expand their markets, enter new markets, or minimize their competition. Once the financial deal is done, the real work of bringing together disparate companies, cultures, and content begins, and it’s not for the faint of heart. Mergers and acquisitions create substantial risks, many with steep financial consequences for all parties involved if they are handled incorrectly. Below are some of the challenges fme has encountered in our projects, some specific examples, as well as strategies we have used to ensure our clients’ success after the dust settles.

Common Challenges in Mergers and Acquisitions

Every merger or acquisition is a complex challenge to combine the people, processes, technology, and content from two or more sources. The way data is saved, naming conventions, and base data structures can all be vastly different, and scaled into large volumes of data, the entire project can quickly become a technical nightmare. Here are a few of the frequent high-level challenges we’ve encountered:

  • Cultural and organizational differences
  • Legacy system data volume and scale
  • Decommissioning timeline of legacy systems
  • Differing data structures between legacy and target system
  • Data security and compliance during migration
  • Content and metadata extraction limitations (i.e., throttling) in legacy systems

Another common situation: the technical teams and subject matter experts that know the legacy systems, data, and document history may not be entirely cooperative, may be leaving the company too soon, or are already completely unavailable.

Critical Risks during Mergers and Acquisitions

The challenges above combined with the human issues and attitudes during the process can be amplified to create substantial financial and organizational risks during a platform consolidation project:

  • Compromised data security and non-compliance – Data breaches and non-compliance with industry regulations and data protection laws can lead to legal actions, fines, and penalties imposed by regulatory authorities. This can result in substantial financial costs, reputation damage, or even suspension or revocation of regulatory approvals for pharmaceutical products. In some cases, compromised data security during a merger can result in data breaches and the exposure of sensitive patient and clinical trial information, leading to privacy violations, identity theft, and additional legal liabilities. Ultimately, if not adequately overseen during a merger migration project, there is a risk of intellectual property being compromised or stolen.
  • Data loss or corruption during migration – fme is frequently called in to repair this issue. A poor system migration and consolidation strategy can lead to the loss of critical intellectual property, proprietary information, and trade secrets, harming an organization’s competitive advantage. If critical data is unavailable, it can also disrupt normal business operations, leading to downtime and productivity loss. Data inconsistencies can affect data accuracy and reliability in the new target environment. The effort to recover from a poor migration can become a costly resource drain; complex data loss requires significant time, effort, and resources, diverting attention from other critical business goals.
  • Incomplete data migration – Incomplete data migration may result in data gaps and inconsistencies that affect data integrity and quality. It can also result in non-compliance with regulatory authorities leading to fines, legal actions, and damage to the organization’s reputation. In highly regulated Life Sciences industries like pharmaceutical development and manufacturing, the risks escalate to delayed drug development, inaccurate reporting to authorities, or incorrect research findings. Missing or outdated patient and clinical trial data can potentially affect the safety and efficacy of drugs and treatments, creating real-world risks to patients and potential product recalls. Regulatory agencies routinely conduct audits and inspections, and an incomplete data migration can lead to audit findings and increased scrutiny from regulators.

It’s understandable to view some of the risks outlined as overly severe or as worst-case scenarios that rarely occur. However, our team at fme has extensive experience and, regrettably, we have witnessed each of these scenarios unfold. Conversely, it’s important to recognize that these challenges and risks can be effectively managed with a thorough understanding of the scope and requirements involved in a complex merger and acquisition project.

fme Strategies for Success during Mergers and Acquisitions

fme leverages many strategies to eliminate the challenges above and minimize the risks during merger and acquisition migrations. Here are some that we employ to ensure our clients’ success:

  • Systematic, proven processes – fme has an exceptional team of highly talented and experienced data migration experts. We’ve been doing this for over 20 years for the largest regulated and non-regulated firms on the planet. We have developed a clear set of proven steps to define client requirements, and then to classify, migrate, and validate all information to ensure it is available in the target solution.
  • Overcoming data volume and scale – Migrating substantial data volumes in most mergers and acquisitions presents a major challenge. fme overcomes this challenge by leveraging our proprietary data migration solution migration-center. First of its kind on the market, we specifically designed this unique tool to easily scale for large and small data volumes being migrated between an extensive range of source and target platforms. For example, for a global pharmaceutical company that acquired two biotech firms, fme successfully migrated into production ~2 million document objects with 18 TB of content within a 5-month project timeline. Learn more about migration-center here >>
  • Data Security and Compliance – Data security and integrity are paramount across all fme project teams. We conduct thorough risk assessments and implement robust data protection measures and access controls throughout the migration lifecycle. Internally and externally, we adhere to the highest security standards to ensure our clients’ data is controlled and protected from end to end.
  • Data loss and corruption during migration – To mitigate the consequences of data loss/corruption during migration, fme employs proven data migration best practices from hundreds of previous migrations. In each project, we conduct thorough incremental and phased testing before a production cut over migration. Once the migration is complete, we execute comprehensive tests to verify the production data is the correct, complete data.

Each migration is unique and comes with its own set of obstacles and surprises. Over hundreds of successful projects, we’ve developed and proven a clear set of strategies, processes, and checkpoints that ensure success in any merger and acquisition migration initiative. The key is to understand the details so small issues don’t grow into giant problems.

Conclusion

Data migration during mergers and acquisitions involves complex, varied challenges. The significance of the data increases the likelihood of consequential mistakes, and the task of integrating different systems while ensuring data integrity, adherence to regulations, and security becomes highly demanding.

fme excels in intricate environments with our detailed planning and a strong technological migration structure. Through our experience, we are equipped to handle data complexities with unique proficiency and recognize both the challenges and opportunities for improvement in merger and acquisition migrations. This approach uncovers new possibilities and untapped value in content libraries. We consistently achieve successful outcomes, maximizing the value of our clients’ technology investments.

Contact fme about your Merger and Acquisition Challenges

Contact us to start your discussion on how to minimize the risks in your next merger and acquisition data consolidation. fme’s team of experts can help you plan your roadmap before your team gets lost in a forest of frustration and delays. From the most effective platforms to efficient data schemas, fme has a clear path that unites your newly combined people, processes, and technology for organizational success.

Whitepaper: Essential Steps to a Successful Data Migration

Whitepaper: Essential Steps to a Successful Data Migration

As companies undergo significant changes and upgrade their core systems, ensuring the quality and usability of the data being migrated is paramount to unlocking the full potential of new technologies. We are excited to share practical tips and insights gained from decades of project experience in complex data migrations to help you achieve a smooth and successful transition. Read our Essential Steps to a Successful Data Migration whitepaper to gain invaluable knowledge to support your digital transformation journey.

In this paper we cover:

  • Realistic Scope of Data Migrations: One of the most common barriers to a successful data migration is failure to realistically and independently plan the time required to classify, migrate, and verify the data.
  • Effective Migration Project Phases: It is critical to break the data migration into logical phases that are aligned with the wider digital transformation initiative.
  • The Importance of Validation: Validating the migration is essential to ensure data can be recalled and relied upon as part of business processes, and requirements should be agreed upon from the outset.

Don’t wait – get this paper before your project starts!

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, it is critical to get the most ROI from your technology investment. This paper outlines invaluable steps to ensure you achieve the full potential of your digital transformation by providing insights and practical strategies to navigate the complexities of data migration. Gain access to expert knowledge that will empower your organization to scope your project properly, craft an effective migration strategy, and plan for critical data validation after your migration. Download our whitepaper today and ensure the first step to unlocking the full potential of your digital transformation journey is successful.

Overcoming Data Migration Challenges: 3 Essential Steps for Success

Overcoming Data Migration Challenges: 3 Essential Steps for Success

All too often, when a heavily-regulated company (e.g. in Life Sciences) puts out a Request for Proposal (RFP) for data migration in line with a major system update, there is a significant mismatch between the work they specify and what will actually be needed to do the job properly.

That’s because moving data across to the new system, and ensuring it’s clean, compliant and optimized to deliver everything that the new software enables, is far from straightforward. It is a major undertaking in its own right, and needs complete buy-in and active partnership from the client side.

The following three tips will help enormously in planning next migrations:

1. Be realistic in your project scoping.

Once Procurement teams and their respective KPIs become involved in the purchasing process (after initial discussions of the project plan and the need for a Class I Project Manager), talk typically moves swiftly to cost and the use of offshore resources.

Yet, this massively undervalues the importance of the data and its integral role in the success of the overall system project. To get the most out of the new system, any imported data will need to be checked, cleaned and enriched so that it delivers as needed, and is fully compliant and can be relied upon to support new operating models – such as IDMP-based Regulatory exchanges, in the case of Life Sciences.

We would always recommend a ‘Best Shore’ approach to data migration, combining the right skills sets and knowledge to do the job as effectively as possible – for instance, with a Class I Project Manager and other strategic capabilities more locally, drawing on other resources on an off-shore basis to fulfil delivery. (We have service locations across the US, Europe, and India.)

2. Understand your role in the engagement – even if you want the external partner to assume the bulk of the work.

It is one thing deciding on the right software for a major system replacement or update, but when it comes to preparing the data to be migrated to it there are all sorts of considerations that need careful thought and communication, which will need the active involvement of the client. This is not about throwing a project over the wall and letting someone else get on with it.

Ideally, for every role that is assigned to an external expert, there needs to be a counterpart internally – from a Project Manager, to business people who can make the time to attend workshops and collaborate with the external service provider on what’s important, who will perform what roles (e.g. enrich the data to ensure its future compliance).

Our experts at fme can take care of every aspect of a migration project – from business consulting and data enrichment, to migration and any system integrations. BUT, this needs to be scoped and resourced appropriately as part of the project plan to keep control of costs and timelines, and ultimately to ensure that the new system project doesn’t fail.

Trying to set a fixed price for a project without first agreeing the parameters is a bit like trying to build an Airfix model without the instructions – a recipe for disaster.

3. Agree effective timelines, based on both priorities and contingencies.

Again, this comes back to the need to be realistic and pragmatic from the outset. This requires total transparency between client and migration partner, and a collaborative approach to the project from the outset.

So, for example, if the reasons behind tight deadlines are to do with a need to be out of a data center by a given date, or are linked to targets and bonuses, it’s important that all parties understand this and can work with those priorities. Often a staged approach to migration can work best, and this can be adapted so that the right elements are scheduled first. Staging can also allow for the reality of team members taking time off for vacations.

Thinking back to projects that have gone off the rails with other vendors can be really useful in all of this. As long as you view your migration/full-service partner as a strategic and integral part of your team, you can’t go far wrong. Speaking for fme, we can bring talent density, knowledge and experience right across the project spectrum – spanning business consulting, technology services, and managed services – as long as all of this has been factored in from the start.

So, let’s start talking.

For more information, please complete this contact form and we’ll schedule a time to discuss your specific requirements.