If you’re running on servers, migrations can be the bane of your existence. Here are some quick tips to help mitigate your migration woes.

Doing a server migration of your construction software, especially to a cloud-hosted server environment, can be a time-consuming and intimidating undertaking. If this process is new to your company, or you have had a bad experience in the past, you may opt to do a test data migration prior to your live migration. If this is the path you choose, there are a few key things to keep in mind.

  1. Backup, backup, and more backups – make sure all your data is backed up prior to testing
  2. Calculate the amount of time required for testing – each area should be tested multiple times
  3. Identify what critical functions and features should be tested
  4. Identify your key staff responsible for testing
  5. Analyze the cost associated with performing the migration twice – particularly if you are hiring out migration services

Identify & Discuss

You will want to have a discussion with management and the staff that uses the software most thoroughly and frequently. This will help you to determine who the 3-5 project owners are, what will need to be tested, and what your timing goal is. You will want to allow 1-4 weeks for testing, but no more than 4 weeks. This will be determined by how much time your staff can dedicate to the project.

Assign A Migration Project Owner

You will need to assign a Project Owner. This person is responsible for checking on progress daily and ensuring that the team stays on time and on target for the scheduled live migration date. Should the team not be able to hit their target completion date for testing, this person will be responsible for communicating and rescheduling with the server migration team.

Data Backup

Probably the most important step: backup your data in two separate places or two separate drives. The last thing you want to risk is having your data wiped out because of an error or mistake. If you’re running on-premise, or even on a cloud server from a data center, we highly recommend getting in a habit of backing up your data regularly.

Key Accounting Functions To Test

Some key areas you will want to test in your construction accounting system are:

  1. Security
  2. Billing
  3. Payroll
  4. Jobs / Projects
  5. Reconciliation
  6. Forms | Check printing, Invoice printing, Reports formatting – run all of your critical reports and check formatting
  7. Imports & Exports | Export data to Excel, Time record import, Document scanning systems
  8. Automation – ensure any automation put in place is working
  9. Emailing from the system
  10. Archive access
  11. Anything else critical to the company

Key Estimating Functions To Test

Some key areas you will want to test in your estimating system are:

  1. Creating estimates
  2. Generating an estimate PDF report
  3. Printing
  4. Exporting to Excel
  5. If integrated, pushing data to your accounting software
  6. Takeoff integration – if software licensing allows in the test environment
  7. Emailing from the system
  8. Archive access
  9. Anything else critical to the company

Conclusion

While you can certainly achieve a successful server migration by testing and implementing yourself, errors and mistakes can happen. The good news is, our team at Bangert, Inc. is ready to help you accomplish a successful migration of a Sage 300 Construction & Real Estate, Sage 100 Contractor, or Sage Estimating software. Give us a call to start a conversation on server migration today.