A new CRM is only as useful as the data inside it. Whether you are moving from spreadsheets, email folders or an older CRM, migration is the step that decides whether your team trusts the new system from day one. Here is the approach we follow.
Step 1: Take stock of what you have
List every place customer data lives today: spreadsheets, old systems, accounting software, shared inboxes and even business cards. Note who owns each source and how up to date it is. You will often find the same customer in several places, with slightly different details.
Step 2: Decide what to bring across
Not everything deserves a place in your new CRM. Agree on rules such as moving active customers and open deals, archiving inactive records older than a set period, and leaving behind duplicates and test entries. Moving less, but better, data is almost always the right call.
Step 3: Clean the data before you move it
- Merge duplicate contacts and companies.
- Standardise phone numbers to an international format, which matters for WhatsApp integration.
- Fix obvious errors in emails, names and company details.
- Agree consistent values for fields such as industry, lead source and status.
Step 4: Map old fields to new fields
Create a simple mapping document: each column in your old data, the matching field in the new CRM, and any transformation needed. This is also the moment to decide what to do with information that has no obvious home.
Step 5: Respect privacy and consent
Bring across consent and opt-out information along with contact details, so marketing preferences are respected in the new system. Make sure access to personal data in the new CRM is limited to the people who need it.
Step 6: Test with a sample
Import a small, representative sample first. Ask the people who know the customers best to review it: are contacts linked to the right companies, are deal values and stages correct, do notes and history appear where expected? Fix the mapping and repeat until the sample is right.
Step 7: Plan the cut-over
Choose a quiet period for the final migration and agree a short freeze when no new data is entered into the old system. Run the full import, check record counts against the source, and spot-check important customers.
Step 8: Go live and keep the old data safe
Switch your team to the new CRM, and keep a secure, read-only copy of the old data for reference. Encourage everyone to report anything that looks wrong in the first weeks, and fix issues quickly so confidence grows.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Migrating everything "just in case" and filling the new CRM with clutter.
- Skipping the test import to save time.
- Forgetting attachments, notes and activity history that the team relies on.
- Leaving data clean-up until after go-live, when it is much harder.
The bottom line
Good migration is careful rather than complicated. Clean before you move, test with real people, and plan the cut-over, and your new CRM will start with data your team can rely on.
