Every organisation is undergoing some form of transformation at any point in time. Sometimes market conditions accelerate transformation, other times an unforeseen merger or acquisition means that a transformation is inevitable.

Whenever we have a business or organisational transformation, there is typically some form of underlying IT transformation. This normally requires applications to be decommissioned and consolidated in some fashion.

Whether your company likes it or not, this requires data migration and this is where the wheels start to come off your transformational strategy.

For a transformation to work it requires two vital ingredients:

• Speed
• Effectiveness

If a transformation takes too long but has an effective end result it’s typically deemed a failure. Your transformation needs to adapt to current business events and new market conditions. There is no point transforming your business (and IT) only to discover that you’re now operating in a completely new, unplanned, environment.

Likewise, it’s pointless racing through your transformation in a mad dash only to deliver something that is ineffective and fails to deliver what the business needs to survive.

The biggest failure point I see time and time again is the failure to recognise that data migration is the keystone to business transformation. The reasons are quite simple: senior management underestimate the specialist skills and technology required to deliver a mission critical data migration, plus data migration is often sidelined and viewed as a bit part player when in fact it should have equal merit to every other aspect of the transformation.

It’s only when leaders experience the personal impacts of witnessing a delayed data migration with a new target business environment sourced with defective data that they understand just how critical data migration is as a core business and technical skillset.

Don’t make that mistake. If you’re responsible for a major business transformation requiring application consolidation, migration or retirement, then make data migration central to your strategy. It will make or break your ability to become an agile, responsive enterprise.