Moving from the Old System Case Study

The Business Problem

The old system's original source code and developer were no longer available, so its data had to be taken as it was. Years of use had left inactive customers, duplicate addresses and products that were no longer sold. Moving the data across unchanged would have carried all of that clutter into the new system.

The Solution

wildesoft.net built a dedicated import tool. First it exported the existing accounts and products to spreadsheets, with extra columns where the office could mark records to retire and see the new account code each customer would be given. The office cleaned the data in the spreadsheets they already knew how to use.

The import tool then read the old data and the cleaned-up spreadsheets and built the new database. It set up accounts, sites and contacts and linked contacts to their sites, carried across site notes, sorted out customers with more than one address, and kept retired products and customers in the history. Past invoices, delivery notes and credit notes were brought across with their completion dates, and each order's status was worked out from its paperwork. The import could be run again at any time, so the data was refreshed just before go-live.

The Result

The business started on the new system with clean, complete data and its history intact. Staff recognised every customer and product on day one.

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