Content Migration Archive

Whitepaper: Essential Steps to a Successful Data Migration

by The fme Team | Jul 19, 2023 | Content Migration, Life Sciences, Migration Services

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.

Request the Paper Now

Overcoming Data Migration Challenges: 3 Essential Steps for Success

by The fme Team | Jun 16, 2023 | Content Migration, Migration Services

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.

Essential Steps of a Successful Data Migration

by The fme Team | Jun 12, 2023 | Content Migration, Migration Services

When planning a digital transformation with a complex data migration, it’s essential to define the key steps from ideation to execution. Today, we will run through the essential steps for a successful data migration.

When it comes to the migration of data in the life science industry, we are generally dealing with a comprehensive set of sensitive data. This could relate to drug product or medical device registrations, IDMP data, or pharmacovigilance data. Unfortunately, life-sciences companies often underestimate the scope of work involved in a successful data migration. Even when they are convinced that their data is in a good shape, they often discover during the process that the data needs to be enhanced, mapped, or revised. Simply put, they underestimate the effort required for the migration activities in comparison to the implementation of new business applications. After all, a business application is only viable when the data are aligned with the required business processes. For this reason, the migration of data should be treated with the same care as the implementation of the solution itself – clear definition of project scope, strategic planning, detailed monitoring of progress, and a formal quality assurance approach. Each of these components are essential to the complete migration strategy.

Understand the migration scope

Developing a firm understanding of the migration scope is pivotal in terms of setting realistic expectations around timelines and outcomes. Consider a specific scenario in which a company needs to migrate thousands of product registrations from a legacy system to the new system, with the assumption that out-of-the-box custom features will be implemented as well. The business needs to determine which registrations are in the migration scope, and whether there are any products that are retired and outside the migration requirements. Additionally, it must be confirmed if the drug products are for human use or also medical device registrations, and what kind of submission format is involved. Other considerations would include any expectations around the enrichment and the migration of IDMP data, as well as the source of the master data. These are just some of the questions that might arise during the assessment phase and must be clarified.

Furthermore, the business must confirm which entities of data will need to migrate. In the example above, it should be considered how to map registration with the target entities, how the data fits into the master data, and what are the expectations of migrating product registration. Other considerations would be whether to migrate the latest registration status or to build the full history with the appropriate status, and how to migrate variation records that are no longer subject to regulatory inspection.

Scoping of migration should always consider the business requirements to get the project’s whole picture and understand how the source data will be used. It’s important to go through the assessment phase, set the scope at such a detailed level that can be understandable and recognized by all stakeholders, and have the same expectations when delivering the project. The assessment should be carried out by an expert that understands the business processes, knows the migration process and the expectation of the target system.

 Create an integrated plan

After the migration scope is known, a plan of action must be established that follows the migration strategy within the larger digital transformation initiative. It is important to involve all stakeholders in the planning phase and understand the activities of the implementation of the new or upgraded information system. Migration activities should go hand in hand with implementation activities, but the migration project should have its own capability to measure progress separately.

When you need to migrate large amounts of data, you will need to put them in different buckets that should go along with the solution implementation cycles. In most cases, some dependencies give you the order of the migration. For example, migration of the master data can be a separate bucket as they are a dependency of the product registration data migrating. Buckets of data can already be defined in the assessment phase, and this is an important input for the planning phase as well as the data location and quality. The plan should consider all potential downtime and there should be agreement between all stakeholders as to what is the optimal time for data transfer activities. Develop a backup plan for identified risks and make an action plan in case of migration activity failure.

 Validate the migration rules with your experts

Another critical step is defining the migration and testing rules and acceptance criteria. It is advisable to organize workshops with business stakeholders to review, refine and confirm the migration rules proposed by the migration team. At this stage it’s important that the team members also define all essential use cases to prevent data errors in migrated data in the target system.

Ensure the implementation consultant is fully briefed on the migration rules associated with the source data. They can warn you about the gaps, especially if the target solution is not out-of-the-box and some custom fields and features were added. Break the data into a logical subset and build out one category at a time, followed by a dry run using the real data from the migration team in the sandbox environment. This is also the step where the business conducts the mapping and provides any data the target system requires but is missing in the source system. The result of each cycle is the validation of the migration rules, migration scripts for data transition and test scripts.

 Validate the migration

Data migration validation is a very important step as the migration team and the business need to ensure data compliance and have a workable solution. Testing done during the build phase is not sufficient and should be carried out on real data, using the test scripts after the migration is completed. The testing strategy defined at the beginning will provide a framework for validation activities along with resource and time allocations. If the testing approach and scope are not set early enough, it might lead to higher costs, longer timelines and could delay compliance validation and approval. It is advisable to include a test specialist in the building phase to understand the business requirements and the transformation/migration specification. The migration leads should help them understand all the use cases to test, and by engaging with business stakeholders on each cycle, can define the user acceptance testing approach.

 The final migration

After approved validation, the final migration can proceed to the production environment. The migration strategy dictates how the migration will be performed, in one go or incrementally, and how to shut down and dispose of old legacy systems. All stakeholders should agree on when to freeze the legacy system, the downtime of the target system, and communicate how to proceed with the migration of data. Once the migration is complete, a final validation should be executed to prove that the migration was performed in accordance with the validation phase.

Conclusion

Before initiating the project, it is crucial to understand the migration scope, what needs to be migrated, whether the source is one system or several systems, what the data looks like, whether or not data enhancement is expected, what are the business requirements, what is the amount of data (e.g., registrations) and establish a migration plan based on these facts to avoid any surprises later in the project. A critical phase of the project is migration validation, as a lack of quality data in the target system can harm business decisions.

fme has been guiding global pharmaceutical and manufacturing firms through their complex migration journeys for over 20 years. We’ve even developed our own proprietary tool migration-center to enable seamless migrations with minimal downtime. Contact us to discuss your challenges and start your journey on the right path.

Additional Migration Resources

fme continually publishes articles from our experts about migration topics. Review some of them below, and then contact us to discuss your current challenges.

Preparing for Migration: Critical steps to know

by The fme Team | May 4, 2023 | Content Migration, Life Sciences, Migration Services

In a previous article “Migration strategy and the path to operational resilience”, we examined the relationship between data migration and regulatory compliance, and the importance for enterprises to create a clear plan for initiating a data migration. Today, we will look at how migration is never one size fits all, and how each company’s migration journey will be different, requiring strategic approaches linked to the complexity of the unique data. There are several key steps to ensure migration initiatives are as streamlined as possible.

Understand the project scope: Assessing the quality of data, requirements, and complexity of data will help you set the right migration strategy.
Set realistic timelines: The assessment phase will help create an achievable migration plan that includes an ability to clearly measure progress.
Define the migration rules with the experts: Allow the migration expert to come out with the migration order and the rules for you to confirm.
Validate the migration: Set the testing strategy during the assessment phase. Conduct preliminary testing during the building phase and confirm with the business that all use cases were considered when preparing the test scripts.
The final migration strategy: The migration strategy dictates how the migration will be performed, on a one time basis or incrementally, and how to shut down and dispose of old legacy systems.
Sanity checks in production: Once the migration is complete, a sanity check on the agreeable amount of migration data should be initiated to prove that the migration is performed in accordance with the validation phase.

Define the scope of the project

Scoping a migration project involves defining the parameters, requirements, and goals of the project, and developing a clear plan and timeline for the migration. It’s also important to define the limits of the project and identify what won’t be included in the current phase.

For example, in the pharma industry, the implementation of the IDMP (Identification of Medicinal Products) standards requires updates, changes, and possibly even the roll-out of a new information system, but this type of agile modus operandi doesn’t always align with the pharma industry’s historically siloed way of working. Nearly every team in the drug development lifecycle – safety, clinical, regulatory, and research and development – can use different, disconnected systems that might not even integrate (e.g. Submission management, RIM, Master data management, Pharmacovigilance, Document management system etc.). Additionally, they are encouraged by the IDMP implementation to apply a single unified, holistic platform that removes silos connecting data and people.

When a decision on the implementation of a new solution and migration is made, it is important to set a clear scope and goal for the whole project. In the context of the implementation of regulatory solutions in the pharma industry, this can be a big deal for the company and the comprehensive assessment of the project is of paramount importance.

Getting started: Plan a data assessment

Before commencing, it is critical to have a clear overview of the project scope, data, and information to ensure efficient planning and execution. Data migration projects in the life science space are often complex, time-consuming and in most cases involve multiple systems and different technology. A clear and comprehensive assessment phase is key to avoiding exceeding predetermined budgets, implementation delays or undercutting business processes. The assessment phase is primarily used to review and assess the data in the existing systems and identify any potential issues and risks that might occur during the project. The purpose of this phase is not to carry out any migration activities, but to benchmark the scope, set recommendations, strategy and ensure visibility for the client. At this juncture, the client should have already known the migration requirements and the expectations for the migration. As a result of the assessment, a decision can be made to go further with the major project after the plan is clear or whether a POC (Proof of Concept e.g. with the migration-center PoC Package) should be performed to assess some more complex data of the migration (e.g. Migration of the drug registration history).

Choosing the right migration approach

Once a thorough data assessment has been carried out, the next step is to decide on the right migration approach. Every company’s data is unique, and the appropriate migration strategy will depend entirely on the quality, value, and complexity of the data. For example, sensitive regulatory data should be handled with particular care. Moving ahead without proper planning will ultimately cause more work in a later phase, and possibly undermine a project’s success. We often recommend businesses to migrate registrations of important products separately and the rest after the go-live, using the same migration rules. This decision can be made if a high volume of data should be enriched, and the business cannot provide them on time. Another important consideration is whether to migrate everything at once – a Big Bang migration – which requires considerable time and resources to complete. Alternatively, businesses can carry out the migration incrementally and transfer data in phases – this is a rolling migration. A big bang can be more straightforward, but a problem with this approach is that no additions or changes can happen during this time, as all data processes are paused during the migration process. An incremental approach doesn’t require as much downtime but can bring more complexity as the source and the target system are run in parallel, eliminating downtime.

 Aligning project & migration timelines

Knowing when to initiate the migration is pivotal. Ideally, the migration should take place in parallel with the solution implementation process, and the development of the migration rules should follow the implementation cycles. For example, when the solution implementation of master data is locked, the definition and development of the migration master data can start and eventually be migrated. After each cycle, the business should confirm the migrated data in the target system and if all the requirements were fulfilled. This approach tells us that we need to understand the whole concept of the project, including the implementation of the solution when building the plan. Otherwise, it is impossible to set all cycles in a logical order and set the right priorities. It is essential that the data migration is carried out in tandem with domain experts that have the technological know-how and strategic acumen to deliver.

Consider a Proof of Concept data migration

Rigorous planning and assessment are critical to the success of any data migration project, and in some instances, a proof of concept (POC) is highly advisable. A POC data migration is essentially a trial run of a larger data migration project, geared towards testing the feasibility of migrating data from one system to another. The purpose of the POC is to demonstrate the viability of the data migration project and to identify any potential issues or challenges that may arise during the actual migration process. When a company is approaching a large-scale data migration, or a high-risk migration involving sensitive or mission-critical business data, a POC can provide significant value.

For a successful POC, it is important that the business provides rich sample data so that the migration team can test and verify the exact processes that will be used in the full migration.  Before running the POC, businesses should:

Review sample data sets and consider all use cases
Confirm the result of the migration fulfills the requirements
Examine and define any gaps and how to fill them
Define what work is required if they need to enrich their data

By its very nature, migrating data can be a complex and protracted process, and if not thought out fully in advance, can lead to significant data loss and system downtime unless conducted with a professional migration software. In our next blog, we will highlight the key success factors and best practices for optimized migration.

Contact us to start your migration right

Whatever the reason for the data migration, the goal of all stakeholders is to provide a solution to the business in order to improve business performance and ensure competitive advantage. To achieve this, they should give more attention to data migration and be smarter in the assessment, planning, and migrating data with experts that have experience and knows the business in the life science industry.

Migration strategy and the path to operational resilience

by The fme Team | Apr 6, 2023 | Content Migration, Life Sciences, Migration Services

Over the past few years, an effective digital transformation has been underscored emphatically as a prerequisite for long term business success. Complacency around operational and digital resilience now represents a legitimate existential threat to enterprises in any industry, both from a competitiveness and regulatory compliance perspective.

At its core, digital operational resilience describes an enterprise’s ability to mitigate the risk of spontaneous server outages, rapidly recover from service interruptions and maintain a bird’s eye view of potential systems vulnerabilities. Upgrading to modern solutions and maintaining legacy data in those solutions with an effective data migration strategy is an important aspect of robust digital resilience strategies. This article introduces the importance of an effective migration strategy within a digital transformation process, the approaches being adopted by industry leaders, and best-in-class examples that can accelerate business value.

The link between data migration and regulatory compliance

While data migration has become an integral process in the digital transformation game, it is often overlooked as a core facet of regulatory compliance. Botched or poorly executed data migrations can be catastrophic from an operational point of view – leading to data loss, data corruption and unnecessary downtime – and can also incur heavy regulatory sanctions. If personal data is lost or compromised during a migration, it can result in legal and financial penalties, reputational damage, and loss of customer trust. For example, if a company can’t produce the required documentation for review and approval, it can impede drug certification and undercut revenue.

To add to the challenges, public discourse around data privacy has intensified over the past few years, with new frameworks being implemented to protect users’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII): General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the Data Protection Shield are just some of the regulatory initiatives designed to safeguard user data in recent years. This new regulatory minefield has forced enterprises to rigorously assess their processes for handling and storing user data and has amplified the case for robust data migration strategies when integrating new systems and combining data in corporate merger processes. It is essential that data is held securely and that the processes for protecting that data fit snugly within regulatory parameters. Effectively planning a migration to a new system can also enhance data security, while also ensuring that the data is accessible for deletion in accordance with GDPR stipulations. Additionally, enhanced data control and security can greatly mitigate the risk of data breaches and associated regulatory penalties.

According to a 2022 survey by digital infrastructure company Equinix, complying with data regulations was a top priority within the technology strategies for 87% of US organizations’, with 83% acknowledging IT infrastructure migration to the cloud as a top priority. The groundswell of momentum powering enterprises’ migration to cloud based servers from on-prem physical servers shows no signs of slowing down. We believe that innovative data migration technology will be a key component of successful digital transformations to advanced technologies. Luckily for businesses today, the development of advanced data migration technology is bringing more transparency into the data migration process with an established content migration tool, giving enterprises a diverse set of tools to choose from to ensure they are well equipped to thrive in today’s frenetic digital environment

Trust proven, consistent experts

The often-ignored truth is that data migration is a complex endeavor that touches multiple departments and roles that need to coordinate tasks, requirements, and timelines. By leveraging innovation partners with demonstrable expertise in the data migration arena just like our Migration Services team, companies can now navigate the migration journey with a greater sense of confidence. To be successful, migration experts and implementation consultants of the target system should have a common understanding of the business objectives. In an ideal scenario, consultants should be available for the entire duration of the project, to ensure consistency of service delivery. Rotating personnel on the project might incur delays as they will need to be briefed thoroughly on the progress or could lead to impaired decision making that doesn’t fully factor in legacy efforts.

Understand your ‘why’

Organizations undertake data migration for a variety of reasons, such as strengthening system security, enhancing customer service capabilities, or driving operational efficiencies. Perhaps a streamlined platform is being implemented to support different business processes, establish a new data warehouse, or merge new data from other sources.

Before any prospective migration program is initiated, there must be a consensus and unified vision from leadership around the desired outcome and goals of the initiative. Irrespective of the initial rationale, the end goal is to have streams of up-to-the minute and accurate data sets which can enable businesses to personalize their services and boost customer retention, while developing a more nuanced understanding of key demographics. In both instances, data should be in the system, either the master data or all relevant registration objects.

In future articles, we will discuss key steps for the preparation phase, and what core considerations should be made before project initiation.

Conclusion and next steps

Just because a current content/data-based process works doesn’t mean it’s efficient

by Wesley White | Nov 16, 2022 | Content Migration, ECM, Life Sciences

New or consolidated systems should lead to better outcomes, so content migration pre-assessments are important to maximize the ROI.

Whether the goal is digital transformation, system consolidation or moving to a new content management system – if you’re going to spend a lot of money on a new IT project it should be with a view to delivering something tangibly better.

Too often departmental teams have become so adept at process workarounds to assemble or manage content, however, that they lose sight of what’s possible. As a result, when they are asked to give an overview of their current systems and ways of working, they tend to be overly optimistic about the caliber and integrity of the content that will need to be transferred to the new system.

This creates risk, as content migration projects are scoped, planned and costed on the back of these insights.

It’s quite odd, when you think about it, that such pivotal projects – which may involve critical Regulatory, Clinical or Quality systems – should be left to chance in this way. No airline or pilot would embark on a transatlantic flight without first checking for expected weather events, happy to simply react and make adjustments once hurricane conditions present themselves. And yet companies fix budgets and set deadlines for projects that have been scoped with only partial knowledge of the conditions that will be encountered. They prepare for a smooth ride, yet in nine cases out of 10 experience something altogether more turbulent.

Apples & oranges

In the aftermath of a merger/acquisition, it’s expected that blending systems will throw some issues if the technology platforms differ, the object models don’t match, or if the receiving/lead company does not have direct insights into the scale and integrity of the incoming systems of record.

But even within one company, there are likely to be corrupt, inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date files, or differences in data model, which will continue to cause issues if migrated without remediation to a new platform or system.

And it is far better to understand the scope and scale of such issues before a content migration project takes form. The danger, otherwise, is that an already sizable undertaking will multiply as change order after change order is pushed through, with the result that ‘best case’ deadlines and budgets are far exceeded.

Warning signs

So how can you tell if you are likely to encounter such issues?

Clues to a sub-optimal starting point might include:

Over-reliance on highly manual or protracted processes, often involving multiple people, to prepare and submit a document;
Dependence on file shares or non-managed systems to locate information; and/or
The need to regularly plug gaps in content by chasing down additional detail;
Not being sure to what the actual number of documents there are that are required in the new system.

Don’t rely on guesswork

The only reliable way to scope content migration work is to engage the specialists ahead of time. Giving them an opportunity to look over the data themselves, ask the right questions, gather the correct number of documents in scope, and conduct a gap analysis between the data models of the old and new systems, will ensure that the formal migration project is scoped and designed optimally.

From all of this knowledge, for instance, and with a clearer idea of how content is typically organized, those that will later be tasked with performing the migration service will be able to architect the best approach – both tactically and strategically.

Considerations include:

How much data/content is earmarked to be migrated (and which data/content is beyond the scope of this project)?
Where is the data/content coming from, and where is it going to?
Which data models are involved in the old and new state?
How many data/content attributes exist in the old and new system?
What are the risks associated with a poor or badly scoped migration?
Where are the gaps/differences between the old and new models, and what will be needed to address them?
Given all of the known parameters, will a phased, or ‘big bang’ approach work best?

Forewarned is forearmed

Strategic pre-assessments, which can also be thought of as Phase 0 in the fuller context of a system migration, are an investment in a tight, focused, and hopefully expedited main project.

As a rule of thumb, we recommend allowing 6-8 weeks ahead of the core undertaking. During this time a project manager, migration lead, and business analyst will conduct a thorough analysis of all of the variables and propose a migration approach that will deliver maximum value.

This pre-assessment can be conducted entirely remotely.

Involving the execution team ahead of time also starts to build a strong relationship and understanding of the context of the migration, setting expectations on both sides. All of which should contribute to and build confidence in a smooth project delivery.

To discuss your own data migration journey, please fill out this contact form and we’ll put you in touch with our experts.

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