If you are the owner of a small to large scale company, you need to ensure that Salesforce data migration is done every quarter. This is something that you cannot escape from. Today, the corporate world is filled with acquisitions, and mergers and technology teams are given innovative systems to integrate and migrate pretty often. This is where you must ensure that the admins and the developers of your organization are aware and have mastered the data migration strategies and techniques well.

If you can do this, you will be able to get a competitive edge in the market and boost the quality of your company's data migration to a large extent. This, in turn, will have a positive impact on the lifecycle of the projects that you are working on too. Now the question is, how can you implement effective strategies when it comes to Salesforce migration?

What do experts suggest?

The following are some essential tips to help you create effective strategies for Salesforce migration-

1. Make sure that you make the processes repetitive- As a business owner, you must ensure that the process of migration is a repetitive one. You will not gain much if you just figure out a way to create some CSVs and get the data imported into the Salesforce platform at a given point of time. You need to think about what you should do to make the process a repetitive one. You would like to have a tool that helps you to migrate the data from one sandbox to another as and when needed as well as have it done regularly so that it is migrated several times before the final process goes outlive.

Now, how can you get this benefit? The key is to delete that data out from the system that you do not need. You should structure the migration process in such a manner that you get the ability to load the data, test it, and delete than repeat the whole process once again till you get the desired results. With practice, you get the confidence you need, and you can just about redo anything that your business needs to transform the initial Salesforce migration with success.

2. Focus on adaptability- You must ensure that the framework or tool that you use for your Salesforce migration is adaptable like, for instance, a code that is in Apex or Java or something else. The goal here is to reflect and reuse to the maximum extent. The same thought should also apply to the Salesforce migration process. It is here that you should get a good version control system and a useful Salesforce migration tool like the Force.com migration toolkit for your needs. This ANT/JAVA based tool will make the Salesforce migration process seamless and straightforward. You should ensure that your migration strategy has automation and create a push-button type setup whereby you can eliminate all the manual misses that a developer on the team can make. Make sure that Salesforce supports the tool you use, as this makes the migration faster and hassle-free. The ANT migration tool is one such flexible tool that ensures that you use command line data. This helps you to conduct error-free Salesforce migration efficiently. It is also a cost-effective tool that small to medium scale companies can bank on too.

3. Think about the code, and the configuration-You should ensure that the code is simple. You should avoid having data with complex codes that need changes when you need to add even a small change; for instance, when you need to migrate a new attribute to the source or an extra transformation has to be done for the quality. Ensure that the data mapping is done by the data and not by the code. This helps you to make the process generic, and maintaining codes become an easy process. You can ask your developer teams to focus on writing the code from the product metaphor. Make sure that you do not have many business rules tucked up in the middleware or else for every new project you need to make innovations.

4. Reporting-You need to think about reports. However, the sad reality is that many software developers and admins ignore this vital aspect. They land up, missing out on salient data points, and this affects their effective migration. You should never overlook or even overlook the data reporting requirements of an organization. Make sure you have an effective plan in place that does not interrupt your data reporting.

If you focus on regular data reporting, you can make all the stakeholders of the company happy, and the processes can function correctly. When you are focusing on data reports, make sure that you maintain all the source data information so that there are no issues or errors. Note, that Salesforce migration always has to be seamless like the data is initially loaded onto the Salesforce platform. Note that the data in your organization is the king, so make sure that migration planning and integration is done well. The quality of the data should be good as it will help everyone involved in the process.

Last but not least, make sure that you pay attention to integration and migration. It is prudent for you to connect both of them. Make sure that you have a good data integration team in place for your projects. Most of the rules that you apply to integration will apply to data migration under Salesforce as well. Migration is never a one-time task, so make sure you conduct it regularly.

Use an excellent Salesforce migration tool like the force.com migration tool so that it can be done seamlessly. Ensure that you create a dedicated team of admins and developers to conduct the salesforce data migration tasks for your company regularly so that you get a strategic edge in the market with success! You just need to do it in the right way.