Transitioning Off Agile: A Successful Data Migration Plan | Life Beyond Agile

Transitioning from outdated Agile PLM systems to a modern, cloud-based solution like Propel is now easier than ever. In this session, our expert speakers, Jeff Nichols (VP of Professional Services, Domain Systems) and Florina Buga (Solutions Architect, Propel) delve into the intricacies of data migration, discussing strategies for extracting, transforming, and loading large datasets while maintaining data integrity. 

Whether you're using the current version of Agile or older, the speakers provide actionable insights and best practices for a successful migration to Propel. Learn how to navigate the complexities of managing your product data and streamline your transition to ensure your business remains competitive and compliant.

Key Insights & Takeaways:

1. Ensure your data schema is fully understood to execute a successful migration from Agile PLM to Propel.
2. Focus on defining the scope of your migration: decide whether to bring over all data or only the most recent and relevant records.
3. Consider the nuances of data transformation, including how custom fields, units of measure, and attachments will be handled in Propel.
4. Prepare for a smooth migration by scheduling multiple test runs to verify data integrity before the final production cutover.
5. Take advantage of Propel’s cloud-based architecture to streamline updates and reduce downtime compared to on-prem solutions.
6. Use your existing Agile setup as a blueprint to rebuild workflows and approval matrices in Propel, ensuring a smooth transition.
7. Evaluate the need for post-adapter tools to customize how Propel outputs data to integrate seamlessly with your ERP systems.

What The Experts Say:

JEFF NICHOLS:

• “A lot of people think, ‘Our file vault is however many gigabytes or terabytes big, it'll take forever to migrate all of that.’ Well, no, we would stage that before migration and then just do a delta from the last week, for example. So, we have methods and processes in place that expedite and ensure the validity and completeness of the migration.”
• From a scope perspective, do you want to bring everything, the entire database? Does it make sense to bring everything? For example, do you want to bring orphan items — items that do not report into a Bill of Materials structure? Do you want to bring inactive and obsolete items with you? Or do you want to narrow the data set down to anything that’s been involved in a sellable product over the last five to seven years? These are questions that would help to define the scope of that which you are migrating to the Propel solution.”

FLORINA BUGA:

• “Propel customers have the opportunity to change some of their processes, some of their workflows. For example, I notice quite often that Agile customers are removing some phases that they were not using over the years in Agile, but they were not able to remove the phase from the workflow.”
• “We can migrate the configuration from one org to another. It's very important — when we sync with the previous Agile database export/import, Salesforce handles this much easier. It's just clicking a refresh button, and it does not require the production org to be down in order to do the database export. It definitely doesn't take as many hours as it does in Oracle Agile.”

Ready to discuss your business’ data migration? Ask for one of our Agile migration specialists to get started.