Realistic Data Migration Costs

A client of mine was quoted $4,300 to migrate 2,500 records from a
system which could export to .txt files. The only consideration from
a straight import data view point, was that each Contact was related
to an Account. The only details which were required to be imported
were contact details (address, phone, mobile etc) and the association
with the parent company.

To my way of thinking, this is a serious design flaw of MSCRM if it
requires this amount of work, to simply show the link between the
contact and the account - am I missing something??? It would have ben
far cheaper I know to use Scribe. I would rally, really really
appreciate some feedback here on what the implications of using the
DMF are, and if there are some guidlines. If you have 1,000 otherwise
flat records to import, but need to import their Account relationship
- how long would this take?

Thanks in anticipation
Cathy

Jake
Thu Feb 03 10:01:02 CST 2005

Well, lets think of it this way. Lets say the consulting companies rate is
$100/hour as an example, they are saying it would take 43 hours? I am
usually not this critical, but that is REDICULOUS. YOU could buy the Scribe
Insight product for that and use it whenever you want. The migrate license
is $995 and is good for 30 days.

I would estimate I could do the import you mentioned below in an hour or two
barring any unforseen issues. I would, and have only used Scribe for all
data import and integration needs so I have no idea how long the DMF would
take.

"Cathy Allington" wrote:

> A client of mine was quoted $4,300 to migrate 2,500 records from a
> system which could export to .txt files. The only consideration from
> a straight import data view point, was that each Contact was related
> to an Account. The only details which were required to be imported
> were contact details (address, phone, mobile etc) and the association
> with the parent company.
>
> To my way of thinking, this is a serious design flaw of MSCRM if it
> requires this amount of work, to simply show the link between the
> contact and the account - am I missing something??? It would have ben
> far cheaper I know to use Scribe. I would rally, really really
> appreciate some feedback here on what the implications of using the
> DMF are, and if there are some guidlines. If you have 1,000 otherwise
> flat records to import, but need to import their Account relationship
> - how long would this take?
>
> Thanks in anticipation
> Cathy
>

John
Thu Feb 03 13:20:22 CST 2005

jake is correct....if a company has not worked with crm before then they may
need longer etc to learn the product but honestly 2500 records is nothing.
As jake said they can bring in scribe migrate to do the job. At the same
time the DMF could be used but for such a small amount of data its not
worth the hassle.

Your cheapest option if you do not have programmers is scribe.

--
John O'Donnell
Microsoft CRM MVP
http://www.mscrmfaq.us


"Jake Horn (www.mscrmexperts.com)" <Jake Horn
(www.mscrmexperts.com)@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:530C559B-4683-479F-BAE4-DE75ED90F7C3@microsoft.com...
> Well, lets think of it this way. Lets say the consulting companies rate
is
> $100/hour as an example, they are saying it would take 43 hours? I am
> usually not this critical, but that is REDICULOUS. YOU could buy the
Scribe
> Insight product for that and use it whenever you want. The migrate
license
> is $995 and is good for 30 days.
>
> I would estimate I could do the import you mentioned below in an hour or
two
> barring any unforseen issues. I would, and have only used Scribe for all
> data import and integration needs so I have no idea how long the DMF would
> take.
>
> "Cathy Allington" wrote:
>
> > A client of mine was quoted $4,300 to migrate 2,500 records from a
> > system which could export to .txt files. The only consideration from
> > a straight import data view point, was that each Contact was related
> > to an Account. The only details which were required to be imported
> > were contact details (address, phone, mobile etc) and the association
> > with the parent company.
> >
> > To my way of thinking, this is a serious design flaw of MSCRM if it
> > requires this amount of work, to simply show the link between the
> > contact and the account - am I missing something??? It would have ben
> > far cheaper I know to use Scribe. I would rally, really really
> > appreciate some feedback here on what the implications of using the
> > DMF are, and if there are some guidlines. If you have 1,000 otherwise
> > flat records to import, but need to import their Account relationship
> > - how long would this take?
> >
> > Thanks in anticipation
> > Cathy
> >

celeanor
Thu Feb 03 14:21:01 CST 2005

I did about 2000 records with the exact information and associating with
parent company in under two days and I had never worked with CRM before - I
was pretty slow since I was figuring every thing out for the first time, so
this should give you some guidelines

"Cathy Allington" wrote:

> A client of mine was quoted $4,300 to migrate 2,500 records from a
> system which could export to .txt files. The only consideration from
> a straight import data view point, was that each Contact was related
> to an Account. The only details which were required to be imported
> were contact details (address, phone, mobile etc) and the association
> with the parent company.
>
> To my way of thinking, this is a serious design flaw of MSCRM if it
> requires this amount of work, to simply show the link between the
> contact and the account - am I missing something??? It would have ben
> far cheaper I know to use Scribe. I would rally, really really
> appreciate some feedback here on what the implications of using the
> DMF are, and if there are some guidlines. If you have 1,000 otherwise
> flat records to import, but need to import their Account relationship
> - how long would this take?
>
> Thanks in anticipation
> Cathy
>

Matt
Thu Feb 03 14:54:30 CST 2005

Something else to consider here. Did the company agree to do any data
cleansing? it's possible they are including some time to re-format the data to
fit into CRM or to consolidate duplicates or something beyond just loading the
data.

Matt Parks
MVP - Microsoft CRM

----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
On 3 Feb 2005 05:40:53 -0800, cathyall@chariot.net.au (Cathy Allington) wrote:

A client of mine was quoted $4,300 to migrate 2,500 records from a
system which could export to .txt files. The only consideration from
a straight import data view point, was that each Contact was related
to an Account. The only details which were required to be imported
were contact details (address, phone, mobile etc) and the association
with the parent company.

To my way of thinking, this is a serious design flaw of MSCRM if it
requires this amount of work, to simply show the link between the
contact and the account - am I missing something??? It would have ben
far cheaper I know to use Scribe. I would rally, really really
appreciate some feedback here on what the implications of using the
DMF are, and if there are some guidlines. If you have 1,000 otherwise
flat records to import, but need to import their Account relationship
- how long would this take?

Thanks in anticipation
Cathy

Jake
Thu Feb 03 16:42:43 CST 2005

If you know Scribe, you can do all that in about a day or two. It is very
powerful, one of these days I will get around to writing an article on
MSCRMexperts.com about it.

Jake

"Matt Parks" <mattp65@Yax_RemoveDashAndX_xhoo.com> wrote in message
news:iq3501tcijilt5o0h8a4k1bs4vc593t618@4ax.com...
> Something else to consider here. Did the company agree to do any data
> cleansing? it's possible they are including some time to re-format the
> data to
> fit into CRM or to consolidate duplicates or something beyond just loading
> the
> data.
>
> Matt Parks
> MVP - Microsoft CRM
>
> ----------------------------------------
> ----------------------------------------
> On 3 Feb 2005 05:40:53 -0800, cathyall@chariot.net.au (Cathy Allington)
> wrote:
>
> A client of mine was quoted $4,300 to migrate 2,500 records from a
> system which could export to .txt files. The only consideration from
> a straight import data view point, was that each Contact was related
> to an Account. The only details which were required to be imported
> were contact details (address, phone, mobile etc) and the association
> with the parent company.
>
> To my way of thinking, this is a serious design flaw of MSCRM if it
> requires this amount of work, to simply show the link between the
> contact and the account - am I missing something??? It would have ben
> far cheaper I know to use Scribe. I would rally, really really
> appreciate some feedback here on what the implications of using the
> DMF are, and if there are some guidlines. If you have 1,000 otherwise
> flat records to import, but need to import their Account relationship
> - how long would this take?
>
> Thanks in anticipation
> Cathy
>

cathyall
Thu Feb 03 16:41:51 CST 2005

Thank you all very much. Those were my thoughts but really needed to
check this. And no Matt, there was no data cleansing involved.

The company who quoted me this is an MSCRM Certified Partner.

Thank you to each of you for your comments and feedback - really
appreciated.