Migration from ACT to CRM via Outlook with Business Contact Manage

We have been looking for a straightforward means of migrating ACT to CRM
(reasonable cost and reasonable effort). Alternatives include manual
reentry, Scribe Insight, CDF / DTS.

Is the following migration path technically feasible?

Documentation suggests that the following alternative might work:
1. Install Business Contact Manager (BCM) for Outlook.
2. Use the Business Contact Manager's Import wizard to capture Accounts,
Contacts, Opportunities, etc., into Outlook with BCM. This would exploit the
ACT/ BCM maps in IRIS.
3. Synchronize MS CRM with the BCM database in Outlook.

However, documentation occasionally does not mention the devil in the
details. Will this work?

I do notice that there is no mention of Notes / History migration in this
path.

Thanks in advance for any information.

Matt
Mon Nov 29 13:18:47 CST 2004

Well, I wouldn't do it this way. You are introducing an extra place where data
could be lost and would require additional effort in validating the migration.

I'd look into the migration license for Scribe. From what I understand, it's <
$500 and gives you 45 days or something like that. It's a small price to pay
compared to spending days trying to get this approach to work.

Besides, there is not "synch" between BCM & MSCRM, so you'd be doing a lot of
work at that side as well.

Matt Parks
MVP - Microsoft CRM

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On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 10:46:17 -0800, "Nemo" <nemo@discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote:

We have been looking for a straightforward means of migrating ACT to CRM
(reasonable cost and reasonable effort). Alternatives include manual
reentry, Scribe Insight, CDF / DTS.

Is the following migration path technically feasible?

Documentation suggests that the following alternative might work:
1. Install Business Contact Manager (BCM) for Outlook.
2. Use the Business Contact Manager's Import wizard to capture Accounts,
Contacts, Opportunities, etc., into Outlook with BCM. This would exploit the
ACT/ BCM maps in IRIS.
3. Synchronize MS CRM with the BCM database in Outlook.

However, documentation occasionally does not mention the devil in the
details. Will this work?

I do notice that there is no mention of Notes / History migration in this
path.

Thanks in advance for any information.

SteveChambers
Mon Nov 29 15:29:02 CST 2004

I would agree with Matt on this one, Scribe migration license is excellent.

45 days is loads of time to develop / test and deply that import.

If you'd like to chat about it, let me know - I've recently become Scribe
certified and can likely provide some "lessons learned" type info. I'd be
glad to help you out if you need it.

Cheers,

Steve Chambers


"Matt Parks" wrote:

> Well, I wouldn't do it this way. You are introducing an extra place where data
> could be lost and would require additional effort in validating the migration.
>
> I'd look into the migration license for Scribe. From what I understand, it's <
> $500 and gives you 45 days or something like that. It's a small price to pay
> compared to spending days trying to get this approach to work.
>
> Besides, there is not "synch" between BCM & MSCRM, so you'd be doing a lot of
> work at that side as well.
>
> Matt Parks
> MVP - Microsoft CRM
>
> ----------------------------------------
> ----------------------------------------
> On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 10:46:17 -0800, "Nemo" <nemo@discussions.microsoft.com>
> wrote:
>
> We have been looking for a straightforward means of migrating ACT to CRM
> (reasonable cost and reasonable effort). Alternatives include manual
> reentry, Scribe Insight, CDF / DTS.
>
> Is the following migration path technically feasible?
>
> Documentation suggests that the following alternative might work:
> 1. Install Business Contact Manager (BCM) for Outlook.
> 2. Use the Business Contact Manager's Import wizard to capture Accounts,
> Contacts, Opportunities, etc., into Outlook with BCM. This would exploit the
> ACT/ BCM maps in IRIS.
> 3. Synchronize MS CRM with the BCM database in Outlook.
>
> However, documentation occasionally does not mention the devil in the
> details. Will this work?
>
> I do notice that there is no mention of Notes / History migration in this
> path.
>
> Thanks in advance for any information.
>
>
>
>
>
>

MattNC
Mon Nov 29 23:07:02 CST 2004

I have done migrations from ACT to CRM two different ways:
1) Bought a $100 utility to export ACT to Access. This allowed me to export
each individual ACT table into a separate Access table. I then re-created the
relationships (had to create a new index column in some cases). I then
up-sized the Access database to SQL and used the CDF migration tool to
migrate that db into CRM. I'm not sure why, but even though I had maintained
the Notes/History as I created the Access database and then the SQL database,
they did not migrate into CRM. So if this is important to have, I would go
with Scribe. That's what I did the second time.
2) Scribe: It is quicker than the ACT to Access to SQL to CDF method, though
it is not as straightforward to learn as their marketing material makes it
sound if you don't have any database background. If Notes & History are
important to you, I would go this route and set a day or two aside to go
through the lessons in Scribe and do a sample migration.

There is also the third option: Microsoft Business Solutions has migration
services that are not that unreasonably priced. If your ACT database is not
too customized, they can usually do a pretty quick job, and you'll know that
they are going to get it right. If your company wants quick and right, and
has $2500-$3500 (depends on size of ACT database) check them out.
(mbs.microsoft.com). If this is not something you are going to do on a
regular basis, you may want to go this route rather than invest the time and
money in learning something you are only going to use once.

Good luck! And congratulations on getting out of ACT!

"Nemo" wrote:

> We have been looking for a straightforward means of migrating ACT to CRM
> (reasonable cost and reasonable effort). Alternatives include manual
> reentry, Scribe Insight, CDF / DTS.
>
> Is the following migration path technically feasible?
>
> Documentation suggests that the following alternative might work:
> 1. Install Business Contact Manager (BCM) for Outlook.
> 2. Use the Business Contact Manager's Import wizard to capture Accounts,
> Contacts, Opportunities, etc., into Outlook with BCM. This would exploit the
> ACT/ BCM maps in IRIS.
> 3. Synchronize MS CRM with the BCM database in Outlook.
>
> However, documentation occasionally does not mention the devil in the
> details. Will this work?
>
> I do notice that there is no mention of Notes / History migration in this
> path.
>
> Thanks in advance for any information.
>
>
>
>
>