When organisations appoint suppliers to deliver major technology transformations – like an ERP replacement, CRM upgrade, or Finance/HR system migration – the focus often sits squarely on the platform itself. Vendors promise efficiency gains, new features, and future-proofing. But there’s one critical element that can make or break the success of these projects – the data.
At Stellar, we’ve seen too many businesses underestimate the complexity of migrating data between core systems. Without the right expertise, even the most well-designed system can be undermined by inconsistent, incomplete, or inaccurate data. That’s why our data migration and data assurance services exist – to protect your investment, reduce risk, and ensure your new system delivers the outcomes you expect.
The Hidden Risks of Migration
System integrators and software vendors excel at implementing and configuring platforms, but data is rarely their core focus. This leaves organisations vulnerable to:
- Data loss or corruption – critical records falling through the cracks during migration.
- Inconsistent formats – mismatches between legacy and new systems, causing process errors.
- Poor quality inputs – dirty data being carried over, eroding trust from day one.
- Regulatory exposure – sensitive information mishandled without proper governance.
- Reporting gaps – critical business reports excluded from migration scope, leaving leaders without trusted insights post go-live.
Critically, these risks are often invisible until after go-live – when they’re far more costly and disruptive to fix.
Why Data Is Often Overlooked
From our experience, in many system migration projects the majority of focus and budget goes into application development and configuration, while data is treated as an afterthought. This creates risks that can undermine the entire project, including:
- Reporting rationalisation being left out of scope – despite being critical for business continuity and decision-making.
- Systems integrators focusing on application delivery – but lacking the specialist skills needed for data mapping, reconciliation, and assurance.
- Poor-quality data carried forward – with gaps and inconsistencies only discovered at go-live, when they are most costly to resolve.
How Stellar Supports Critical System Migrations
We partner alongside your application vendor and systems integrator to focus on the lifeblood of the system – the data. Our approach covers:
- Data strategy alignment – ensuring your migration supports long-term data and business objectives, not just short-term project needs.
- Data profiling and cleansing – identifying duplicates, incomplete fields, and inconsistent formats prior to migration.
- Data mapping – defining and automating data mapping and validation steps, so that what goes in is exactly what comes out.
- Testing and reconciliation – independent reconciliation and assurance to confirm data integrity between systems.
- Essential report delivery – generating the reports and dashboards the organisation needs to keep moving forward.
- Governance and controls – embedding policies and ownership to safeguard data quality long after go-live.
- Local expertise – Stellar’s New Zealand-based team works in-person with IT, finance and business stakeholders to reconcile data quickly and deliver the outputs they need.
Why This Matters For You
When your new system goes live, stakeholders’ expectations are high. If the data isn’t right, confidence drops fast. Customer records that don’t match, invoices that don’t reconcile, or critical reporting that no one trusts, or that doesn’t even exist – these issues undermine adoption and ROI.
By engaging Stellar early, you:
- Reduce rework and costly project delays.
- Strengthen trust in your new system.
- Protect compliance obligations.
- Gain confidence that your data and reporting are accurate, complete, and consistent.
- Free your systems integrator to focus on application delivery, while Stellar ensures data migration and assurance are done right.
Final Thoughts
A new system is only as good as the data within it. Investing in data migration and data assurance isn’t an optional extra, it’s the difference between a smooth transition and a costly headache.
Talk to Stellar today about how we can support your next system migration, safeguard your data, and reduce your project risk. Call us on 0800 228 872 or email bi@stellarconsulting.co.nz.
