Many laboratories are prioritizing modernization efforts in their IT strategies, aiming to reduce costs and streamline operations by adopting cloud-based solutions. One of the most powerful platforms to achieve this is Salesforce Health Cloud, which offers healthcare-specific features to enhance lab operations and patient care.
A critical part of transitioning to Salesforce for Healthcare Labs is migrating data from your existing legacy systems. Proper migration ensures that your lab teams—especially Sales and Operations—experience minimal disruption and continue delivering value without missing a beat.
Here are five clear steps to successfully migrate your legacy data into Salesforce Health Cloud:
1. Understand Your Data
The foundation of a smooth migration is understanding the structure and usage of your current data. This helps determine what to migrate and how to align it effectively with Salesforce.
Key considerations include:
Prioritize critical entities with high record volume or recent updates, such as Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, and Cases.
Decide if less-critical entities (e.g., Closed Tasks or Lost Opportunities) are necessary for migration.
Map unique record identifiers to maintain consistent numbering sequences.
Map picklist values to maintain consistency across Salesforce.
Export legacy data into CSV files for seamless Salesforce integration.
Once you understand your data, you can start planning your migration. This includes deciding which data to migrate, when to migrate it, and how to map it to Salesforce.
Beware that wisely hand-picking the data drastically reduces the migration and validation time and effort.
2. Map and Prepare Data in Salesforce
Creating a clear field mapping document that aligns legacy fields with Salesforce is essential.
During mapping:
Utilize standard Salesforce objects and fields wherever possible.
Enable Salesforce State and Country/Territory picklists for standardized geographical data.
Create picklists in Salesforce for consistent entries like Status, Type, or Salutation.
Leverage Salesforce formulas to dynamically generate or concatenate data, simplifying your CSV preparation.
Set up a Salesforce Sandbox for testing migrations before moving data into Production.
3. Execute Your Migration
With data mapping prepared, begin your migration by:
Exporting legacy data into CSV format.
Preparing Salesforce CSV templates.
Transferring data into these templates using tools like Microsoft Excel.
Adjusting data within CSV files, including performing ID lookups, removing special characters, standardizing state/country codes, formatting date/time fields, and eliminating empty fields.
Importing data with Salesforce Data Loader following the proper sequence (typically Users, Accounts, Contacts, followed by other objects).
Start with a Sandbox migration using a smaller subset of data to quickly identify and correct potential issues.
Upon every data load execution, Salesforce will generate a success and an error CSV output files. Avoid the temptation of only fixing the issues in the error file and loading them again. You will have cleaner data if you first delete the successful records, fix the failed records, and load them all as single batch again.
After a few attempts, you will be ready to validate the sample data in your Sandbox environment.
4. Validate Your Data
Post-migration validation is essential. Conduct tests and comparisons between your Salesforce and legacy data to ensure accuracy and completeness. Gradually migrate the remaining data subsets, validating each time to confirm successful integration.
Maintain the latest successful CSV outputs as these become your baseline for the final Production migration.
5. Go-Live
The final migration step is moving your data into Production and officially going live with Salesforce Health Cloud:
Set a clear cut-off date in your legacy system, then perform a final data export.
Schedule your data migration window. Depending on the volume of records to be migrated, this period could range from a few minutes to several hours.
Utilize Salesforce's native backup tools or consider professional Salesforce Managed Services for Labs to create a reliable rollback plan.
Prepare for possible environment-specific challenges despite extensive testing.
Always have a contingency plan and remain flexible to handle unforeseen issues during the go-live process.
Conclusion
Migrating legacy data into Salesforce Health Cloud doesn't have to be overwhelming. By following these steps, your healthcare lab can smoothly transition to Salesforce, ensuring continued operational excellence and improved patient care.
About dxLogic
At dxLogic, we offer Salesforce Managed Services for Labs, including comprehensive Healthcare Salesforce Administration and Salesforce Customization for Healthcare. We specialize in seamless transitions to Salesforce Health Cloud, enabling laboratories to deliver better patient outcomes and drive business success.
