Streamline Data Migration and Business Processes with ETL

Data migration is no simple task—even small, straightforward migrations can become complex and time-consuming. Data may not be formatted correctly or completely mapped out, so IT teams must spend an extensive amount of time gathering, mapping, and organizing data for a smoother transition.

Yet, data migration is a crucial task for organizations looking to modernize and optimize business processes and solutions. Outdated legacy systems are simply too old and slow to handle today’s constant flow of data. Businesses looking to maintain their competitive edge and offer an optimized experience for both customers and employees must utilize the right tools. For many companies, this means migrating millions of pieces of data from multiple sources onto a single platform.

Whether a team is migrating from an on-premises server to the cloud or replacing an outdated storage system, data migrations can become time-consuming, expensive, and overwhelming. Regardless, it’s crucial to get these migrations right. A less successful migration can bring over inaccurate or incomplete data or amplify existing issues within the new system. With the right tools, migrations can be carried out seamlessly, resulting in streamlined business processes and an improved customer and employee experience.

Undertake Massive Data Migration Projects with Ease

There are many instances where companies must undergo data migration: moving from a legacy system to a modern, updated system or setting up an entirely new application within a different structure. One very common scenario that calls for data migration is when one company acquires another. 

Consider what it would be like if your business acquired one additional company. Aside from the general headaches of merging processes and employees, there is a massive amount of data that needs to be combined. Now imagine you had acquired three companies. How would you do it?

Adding another wrench is that mergers always come with tight deadlines. Data from at least three different platforms (often more) have to be migrated and consolidated onto one, so executives can understand the full scope of their new business. 

To even conceive of this task, your company will need the right extract, transform, and load (ETL) tool. Without the right tool, your company will be trapped in Excel hell, trying to keep everything organized and prioritized manually. Some keys priorities to consider when evaluating an ETL tool include:

• A tool that can preserve existing data to ensure that old information or content was still accessible in case of emergency. 
• A solution that could analyze existing data fields and determine which would be easy to migrate and which would not. 
• One that could prioritize data to ensure the most important information was brought over first. 

With the right ETL tools in place, your company can rest easy knowing all data and information were brought directly into the new system, providing your team with a single, clean, normalized database. 

What to Look for in ETL Software

Because data migration is such a tedious task, the ETL tools used to carry out these migrations must include certain key features to make the process smoother. These include:

• Multiple Data Format Capabilities: Data comes from a number of sources and therefore, a number of formats; an ETL tool must be able to handle these different formats. For example, most third-generation ETL tools can handle legacy-based systems such as Excel spreadsheets, XML, UNIX-based applications, and proprietary databases. 

  In addition to handling structured and unstructured data formats, next-generation solutions can simultaneously handle the enormous amount of social networking data now available to businesses. The best ETL tools are those that can handle the challenge of gathering and organizing this type of data. 

• Data Profiling: Prior to data migration IT teams must take the time to audit and understand the data that’s captured in source systems for each business process. An ETL tool should be able to perform both syntactic checks for technical constraints and semantic audits to ensure data is compliant with business policies. Any ‘unhealthy data’ should be remedied or corrected at the data source level rather than in the new system.
• Data Cleansing: One of the most sought-after features within ETL tools is data cleansing; yet, few solutions provide advanced data cleansing and quality features. Solutions that do feature high-quality data cleansing and audit are more applicable in today’s modern BI applications.
• Runtime: Few IT teams have the time or resources to spend weeks if not months on data migrations. ETL tools with faster runtimes not only speed up the migration process but also cut costs and save valuable time and resources.
• Data Manipulation: The best ETL tools are those that support data manipulation both inside and out of the target database, which ensures that all data is in the same format prior to migration.
• Auto-append processing: To avoid transferring duplicate data or content into the new system, look for an ETL tool that features auto-append processing. This feature ensures that only data that are relevant to the current transformation are uploaded and auto-appended into the new system. 
• DataSet Views as Inputs: ETL tools that are able to filter out unnecessary data prior to migration helps to improve overall performance and decrease run time.
• Data Modeling: In addition to retrieving existing data models within a legacy system, an ETL solution must provide users with the capability to build and create new models while synchronizing and metadata changes.

Having the right ETL tool behind a data migration ensures a smooth migration process and streamlines decision-making. Additionally, these high-quality tools help to maintain data quality, provide an accurate vision of company data, and automate certain business processes, reducing the amount of time IT teams spend on repetitive, manual tasks. 

Enjoy Seamless Data Migration with Domo

Data never sleeps — and there’s more of it than ever before. That’s why data migration must be fast, efficient, and simple to ensure organizations have easy access to the valuable data that drives business decisions and increases revenue. With the right ETL solution, data migration can be as simple as drag-and-drop. With a number of easy-to-use ETL tools available, IT teams are bound to find one that allows for fast, simple, and powerful data migration. 

With Domo Magic ETL, users have the ability to easily cleanse, combine, and transform data—all without knowing any SQL. Remember the example we shared above? That was a true story from a real client. With Domo’s magic ETL, the team was able to carry out a successful migration of over two million data records into a potent ETL solution in less than 90 days, well before their expected deadline.

Learn more about Magic ETL by talking with a Domo expert today.