5 Basic Steps for a Successful ECM Migrationfor 2016

I N T ROIf you are planning or considering a data migration for your organization, it pays to cover the basics.

This e-book incorporates the latest advice from data migration research. It contains explanations, insights, and tips on how to avoid basic mistakes, as well as advice on how to streamline your data migration. Although most of our advice is based on data migration in SharePoint, the principles and information can be applied to any Electronic Content Management System (ECMS).

There are two ways you can use this e-book 1. In a practical applied way – for example, by utilizing the check-list attached at the end of this e-book as part of your data migration process – or

2. As an information resource – that is, as a reference guide to help you plan for your data migration or appraise your data migration needs. These two ways are, of course, not mutually exclusive. The attached check-list is a convenient tool that has been included for your benefit, but it has its place and time.

01 5 Essential Steps for a Successful Data Migration

Make sure you consider current options and your future needs.

1Make a solid business case Firstly, you should present a convincing business case to executive management. It is common for senior managers to be unaware of the operational problems that information managers and end users are facing. So that management understands the issues, we advise you to convert the value of data migration into dollars and cents — money talks, as they say! Explain to management how much money is being wasted, what the costs of fixing problems are and, perhaps most importantly, the dollar value data migration will bring. Use this simple equation:ROI = W– C + A ROI - Return on InvestmentW - loss of money caused by the problem C - cost for fixing the issueA - additional value

Estimate the capability of your internal IT department

It is tempting to do data migration internally. However, make sure you are aware of the risks. Start by asking yourself the following questions:

Finally, consider the benefits of hiring an external data migration service.

STRATEGY

step

025 Essential Steps for a Successful Data Migration

What is the opportunity cost of doing it internally?Do you have all the necessary skills to complete the project?If you don’t have the skills, how much time and money will it take to up- skill your team?

Calculate your Return on Investment (ROI) options based on different licenses in new ECMSs

Typically companies choose foundational licensing. Unfortunately, this basic licensing choice has fewer features and options. And, as time goes by, organizations often discover that basic features are not sufficient to utilize their ECMS effectively. In such cases, Information managers either need to change the licensing or install additional software to enable the desired features. To do this, though, they must go back to their managers and make another business case, ask for additional funding, and take care of another project. So, we highly recommend that you estimate your future needs in advance, and calculate your ROI based on different licensing options.

Educate the end user on migration value

Just as you must convince management, it is also important to get the buy-in of the end users. End users respond positively when you can:

step

035 Essential Steps for a Successful Data Migration

Demonstrate how the project will affect their daily tasks;Provide key information about the project, such as timeline; .Ensure that they will receive proper training on the new system; andLet them know if they will have limited access to databases during the migration.

STRATEGY

Evaluate your future needs

Make sure you consider current options and your future needs. Future changes to ECMS architecture can create substantial costs. However, you can prevent these costs by carefully considering your future needs before the actual migration.

Set up a reasonable timeframe

If you decide to engage a professional company to conduct your data migration, add a buffer on top of their estimated time for completion of the project. When estimating timeframes, also consider the possibility of first doing a trial migration. We highly recommend a phase-by-phase migration. By migrating data in chunks, you will decrease the risk of losing all the data; you will also minimize the disturbance to the end user. But the timeframe may change. Please note that this advice is only relevant for large data migrations.

045 Essential Steps for a Successful Data Migration

2PLANNING

step

Get executive approvals for information governance

Information governance policies should be in place at all times. And they are especially useful during migration. So, ensure you have approved plans for the new ECMS. Further, check that everyone involved understands the policies in place for a smooth migration process.

Map potential risks and record changes

Small deviations from the original plan should not be considered a problem. Corporate data migration projects are typically massive — there may be times when things don’t go to plan.

Recording changes, new risks or exceptions will make it easier to recall and review any decisions made during migrations. Document any customizations – including web parts, workflows, and solutions – and evaluate their value. Make sure unused data is archived or deleted, as appropriate to your business requirements.

Make sure you have enough storage capacity

Because of the new ECMS environment, your system will require more space for log files, redesign of tables, and databases in general. So, make sure you have enough storage capacity.

055 Essential Steps for a Successful Data Migration

PLANNING

Hint: Any exceptions should be dealt with at the end of the migration. If this isn’t feasible, have one team member dealing exclusively with exceptions.

Conduct your SharePoint content inventory

It is important to identify redundant data. This will reduce migration time and cost. This is easy to do if your team has created metadata. If they haven’t, you can always enable automatic metadata that will fix previous mistakes and fill in missing parts.

Decide which content should be migrated and which should be deleted

You can clean up and reduce content by up to 76% (Perficient, 2012) by identifying redundant and irrelevant information on file shares. It is faster to go with software that cleans file shares automatically. However, this comes with a higher risk. Alternatively, you may prefer to work with software that merely identifies documents that should be deleted, so a responsible user can decide if the document should be removed or not.

Audit your current Sharepoint workflows

Identify all current workflows. Decide if any workflows need to be updated or removed. Also, check if all your current workflows will be compatible in the new system.

065 Essential Steps for a Successful Data Migration

3CONTENT INVENTORY

step

Hint: If you are working in a multilingual organization, make sure that clean-up tools can be enabled in the languages your business operates in.

Delete old users and duplicates

There is no need to save documents that will not be used. We once had a client that had twice as many file shares as employees! So, delete old users, archive old file shares and move on.

Make sure taxonomies and architecture are well defined and up to date

It is important that your architecture doesn’t have too many exceptions. This will only complicate your work later on. So, don’t forget to update your taxonomies: delete outdated branches, include new alternative labels and make it work for you.

Enable automatic metadata

To implement defensible deletion in your ECMS, auto-categorize documents against retention policies. Automatic metadata will also improve findability, decrease the risk of information overload, identify redundant information, and increase user adoption. We strongly recommend that you enable automatic metadata — the benefits are immediate and it is so easy to implement.

If you have folder-based architecture, make sure you have all the necessary content types

Solutions such as DiscoveryOne provide a content inventory for identifying “low- hanging fruit” for immediate archiving or disposal. For example, DiscoveryOne can identify duplicates and near duplicates. DiscoveryOne also enables you to migrate content systematically by asking for content that matches a variety of types listed within your company’s retention policy.

step

075 Essential Steps for a Successful Data Migration

CONTENT INVENTORY

085 Essential Steps for a Successful Data Migration

4ARCHITECTURE

step

Identify migration opportunities for your ECMS architecture

Typically, our customers know their problems well. However, their most common excuse for not solving them is that everybody is used to doing things the old way. Data migration provides a great opportunity for you to update your architecture, so that it provides information managers with the latest features for information governance.

Map site templates

Ensure that your old site templates exist in the destination farm. If your current templates are outdated, you will need to check that they work in the new system (hint: conduct a sample test). There might be more value in creating new templates than fixing the old ones.

Clean up permission levels

Update your permission levels. Check that people with the highest permissions haven’t left the company. We strongly suggest that you import permissions first and users second.

Document your current system settings

Reapply system settings such as connections, property mappings, versioning, etc. in the new ECMS. It is easier to check if your settings are working properly if you have documented them before the actual migration.

Select and install migration software

Evaluate the risks of a manual compared to an automatic data migration. Read user reviews about software that is typically used. Contact your system integrator partner. Ask for demos before committing to a provider.

Test your migration with a trial package before you commit. Then test it again

Standard practice is to conduct a trial migration first. Create a document package with multiple settings. Include multiple document types with different permission levels. See if all the right users can view, edit , relocate appropriate files. Check that infrastructure, metadata, settings, and documents are migrated correctly.

Index your data if you haven’t done it before

Indexing your data is one of the simplest ways to ensure happy end users and good findability. If you have just migrated your content, make sure it is properly tagged — it’s a good time to clear up the old mess.

Have a backup

It never hurts to be safe. And it’s always better than being sorry.

095 Essential Steps for a Successful Data Migration

5ACTUAL MIGRATION

step

DiscoveryOneTM

DiscoveryOne Content Enrichment is the easiest way to improve search, enable defensible deletion and identify document security risks. By reading, categorizing and tagging documents, DiscoveryOne automatically creates metadata. This metadata can be used in systems such as enterprise search, document management, email and CRM.

CONTENT ENRICHMENT

DiscoveryOne Content Inventory reads file systems to present an overview of what they contain. It identifies documents that are redundant, outdated, trivial, or useful and worth retaining. Usually, a file system contains only 25% of relevant, valuable and useful content, the rest are candidates for disposal.

CONTENT INVENTORY

DiscoveryOne Content Intelligence allows you to mine text for business opportunities and commercial risks. It extracts and condenses insights from massive amounts of text and it does in hours what would otherwise take a person months. Analysts can now identify relationships, topics, trends and sentiment from emails, documents, the web and social media. Utilise your content to discover new value as you have never been able to do before.

CONTENT INTELLIGENCE

For more information please contact us | North America +1 408 663 2328 | Asia Pacific +64 9 950 3299 | info@pingar.com | www.pingar.com

CHECKLIST FOR ECM MIGRATION

Make a solid business case

Estimate the capability of your internal IT department

Calculate your ROI options based on different licenses in new ECMSs

Educate the end user on migration value

Evaluate your future needs

Set up a reasonable timeframe

Get executive approvals for information governance

Map potential risks and record changes

Make sure you have enough storage capacity

Conduct your SharePoint content inventory

Decide which content should be migrated and which should be deleted

Audit your current Sharepoint workflows

Delete old users and duplicates

Make sure taxonomies and architecture are well defined and up to date

Enable automatic metadata

If you have folder-based architecture, make sure you have all the necessary content types

Identify migration opportunities for your ECMS architecture

Map site templates

Clean up permission levels

Document your current system settings

Select and install migration software

Test your migration with a trial package before you commit. Then test it again

Index your data if you haven’t done it before

Have a backup

STRATEGY

PLANNING

CONTENT INVENTORY

ARCHITECTURE

ACTUAL MIGRATION