Migration from Seibal to SugarCRM Professional Edition

[Sequelsys]

Hey guys our org previous setup was on Oracle Seibal and now we want to shift on SugarCRM professional. Now before going on SugarCRM. we want to migrate our Seibal data to SugarCRM. As many fields in Seibal are not currently available in SugarCRM.
What i want to know is how to easily migrate my Seibal data into SugarCRM..

Waiting for fast response

Regards
ALi

[genius786]

Hi,

Its good to see you that you migrate your system of siebal into sugarcrm. You have to create a field which is not in sugarcrm. may i also asked are you using oracle database for sugarcrm ?




Best regards,

[RajVel]

Hi there

Good Day, we can help you to give best and right solution. contact me at

Thanks,
RV
cicom-sugarcrmsolutions@live.com
skype: ci.com-rajvel

[Sequelsys]

@genius786
Thanx for initiating reply....

Now,At backend we are shifting on SQL server 2005 incase of SugarCRM... so you are saying we have to create that field in Seibal or we add new fields in Sugar crm ???
waiting for your reply

[eNick]

Hi Ali,

Full migration from one CRM system to another is a large undertaking.

It's unlikely that you will be able to simply export and import.

As you rightly state, new fields will need to be added but also bear in mind that the structure and relationships of the two systems will differ. In addition, it may not just be data that needs migrating but user accounts, filed documents, report definitions and so on.

You also need to manage your business whilst the migration takes place - you need a full strategy for transition so that users aren't left without a system in place. Not to mention the fact that you need to fit that strategy against your training plan as there is no point migrating to find your staff don't yet know how to use the system.

As a SugarCRM specialist, we're very experienced in performing migration. We use special tools to perform it. We're a certified partner of Talend - Sugar's own data migration partner of choice.

I'd urge you to get in touch with us to discuss a full strategy and how we might be able to assist you.

Contact nick.holt@{removethis}thesugarrefinery.com

[Sequelsys]

So whats your recommendations before migrating what i require and which tools are used to migrate seibel crm to sugarcrm and behind sugarcrm we are using sql server 2005 as database.

[eNick]

Well, clearly I'm not going to give away all our secrets but here's some things to think about:

Initially, I'd start with functional GAP analysis. Identify everything you use in Seibel and then double check Sugar offers the same features. If there is something you do in Seibel that you can't do in Sugar then you're going to need to customise it to do so.

Then you can think about source data to target data mapping. This isn't as easy as just saying "In Seibel there's a field called 'title' and in Sugar there's a field called 'title' etc." You need to check field types, field lengths, whether the values you use exist in drop down lists etc.

Want a quick example? Email addresses. Some systems allow email addresses up to 255 chars long. Sugar insists they are considerably shorter. You might use the title "Professor", Sugar may call it "Prof." You're going to need to identify all such issues and plan how you can deal with them.

A tool like Talend will help you (http://www.talend.com) will connect to Oracle, MS SQL Server and MySql and will help you with all this but there is a steep learning curve - data integration is a very specialised field and it's not like normal programming or DBA duties.

Then you need a plan on how you're going to manage the fact that you're unlikely to be able to tell all your staff to stop work for 2 months whilst you figure out how to move everything. So, you need to set up environments in which you can develop your migration scripts, do test runs, get everything tested and then plan the weekend you're going to perform the task for real. Don't forget a backout strategy in case it all goes wrong!

As you can see, this is starting to look like a professional job. Given the serious amount of money you're going to save by not having to buy all those Seibel licences when you move to Sugar, and the serious risk if you get it wrong and prevent your organisation from working, it's not difficult to make a business case to get some professionals to come in and do this for you - plus they'll be able to do it a lot quicker and will have no end of guidance and advice as they'll have done it all before.

In short, my advice is that if you're a reasonably sized business, with a reasonably large database, and your company depends on this system, let the professionals do it for you because the cost of getting it wrong is too large to contemplate.

[SergeiLo]

Hi everyone,

At the moment we work on white paper that will help you to learn more about data migration/integration and its tricks and tips. If you are interested in getting a draft of it, you may send me an email at sergei.l (at) apatar.com.

Regards,
Sergei
Apatar Open Source ETL

[Sequelsys]

Thanx guys for sharing your views here regarding that issue. special thanx to Enick..... Can we migrate our data to sugarcrm without using any thirdparty tool ???

[eNick]

Yes, you can migrate, using nothing more than SQL statements and text files. It's just going to be time consuming to do it that way.