I have a rule of 3 that I follow. When you do something for the first time, you have no idea whether you will need that knowledge a 2nd time. When you do it a 2nd time, you’re still not sure whether it’s just a coincidence or a potential pattern. But when something occurs a 3rd time, my spider senses go off and it’s critically important to document decisions, actions taken, dependencies, etc. The goal is to memorialize those actions so it can be a reference point for the future.
A little overdue, but I’ve recently migrated my 3rd firm (MGO) to Caseware Cloud Hybrid.
Here are 3 quick lessons learned for those planning the same project.
- Don’t skip or fast track developing governance (e.g. who is responsible for creating new entities? what process should be followed for restricting access to entities? etc)
- Data quality is important. The migration tool matches binders to clients based on engagement properties. The more those values match the client name, the higher likelihood the engagement ends up in the right entity (vs. the default entity).
- Plan for more time than you expect. Our data migration was estimated to take 24 hours based on volume of files but ended up taking 10 days (we still don’t know why). So we had to quickly develop and implement a contingency plan for migrating high priority binders to cloud to allow our people to keep working.
If your firm needs to migrate from RSM Orb to Caseware Cloud Hybrid or DAS, and could use some help navigating that transition, please let me know.
