Why your new ERP does not save your data, but shows every error

A new ERP does not improve data quality automatically, it makes it visible. Business Central mirrors exactly what you feed in. Without clean master data, you migrate old problems into a new system, only more expensively and in an interface that shows you every error directly.

How that clean-up works in practice, in five steps: Cleaning up master data before an ERP migration

Why is data quality a process question and not an IT topic?

Data quality looks like a technical problem and is a question of organisation. The decisive points are: who creates master data, by what rule, and with what mandatory check. Without an answer to that, every migration falls apart, because the target system expects rules nobody has decided.

• Data quality is not an IT topic, but a process question: who creates master data, by which rule, with which mandatory check. Without an answer, every migration falls apart.
• Typical weak points: duplicates in customers and vendors, inconsistent item master data, orphaned units, historically grown special cases without a rule.

These four weaknesses can be measured before anyone migrates: duplicate rate, share of complete mandatory fields, share of inactive master records and the age of the last maintenance. Four figures per data object are enough for a solid assessment.

Why does the order decide the outcome?

The order is the point at which most projects lose money. It runs: clarify the data model and the cleansing rules first, then migrate, then automate. Reversing it means building on sand, because every automation scales the errors along with it.

• The data foundation is the base on which automation stands in the first place. Automated workflows multiply clean data, but dirty data just as much.
• Sequence counts: first clarify data model and cleaning rules, then migrate, then automate. Reverse the sequence and you are building on sand.
• A clean base is the precondition for trusting analyses in BC at all.

The last point is the most expensive one when it is missing. A system whose figures have to be debated first loses its function as a basis for decisions, and then the business departments carry on with their own spreadsheets. If you are facing a migration and do not know how solid your master data is, we look at it together in a conversation.