Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Salesforce are two of the best CRM solutions for most businesses. Some businesses may find Salesforce better and vice versa. Maybe you are planning to switch from MS Dynamics CRM to Salesforce because of some mission-critical reasons. No doubt, a successful migration to Salesforce can power up your sales, service, and marketing activities. But migrating without a plan is like driving a McLaren Speedtail at top speed with blindfolds. Your business requires a comprehensive migration plan to make a move to Salesforce. And you may have many questions if you are embarking on CRM migration for the first time. We get it. That is why we have created this go-to guide to smoothly switching from Dynamics CRM to Salesforce. This guide shares with you:

• The Most Common MS Dynamics CRM To Salesforce Migration Challenges
• The Top Benefits Of Switching From Dynamics To Salesforce
• A Detailed Dynamics 365 to Salesforce Migration Road Map
• Getting Started With A Reliable Migration Partner

Let us get into it.

THE MOST COMMON MS DYNAMICS CRM TO SALESFORCE MIGRATION CHALLENGES

ERP system migration brings many challenges. Imagine an enterprise-level company with diverse international divisions. If you use Dynamics CRM to manage such a company, you will likely use it as a siloed data repository and a single operation center for different multinational affiliates. On top of that, the data entry may be uncontrolled and manual. Here is a list of challenges that a CRM will bring for such a company.

Pre-Migration Challenges

• Checking different autonomy levels of every business division
• Understanding multiple cross-region operations
• Identifying loosely integrated systems and considering their disparate datasets
• Following non-standardized data management practices
• Considering legacy data or, worse, a cascade of both dynamic and static data strewn across business systems
• Struggling with multiple permission levels to access different datasets
• Having different naming conventions and relationships among objects and fields
• Working with records that come with a wide range of attachments – personal docs and contracts, for instance
• Tackling unmanaged metadata entities in the form of System Views, Workflows, and Reports that Salesforce will not understand
• Working with a heavily customized and uninformed D365 CRM implementation
• Ensuring the recurring appointments logged in to the existing CRM system are migrated with no data loss

Post-Migration Challenges

• Conforming to multiple data security regulations for different regions
• Creating complex user training modules and detailed walkthroughs to make sure the new CRM adoption is on track
• Establishing a multilingual translation system for different regions

Other Technical Challenges

• Handling text characters
• Managing HTML tags
• Keeping tabs on the growing data file limits
• Factoring in other project-specific complexities

THE TOP BENEFITS OF SWITCHING FROM DYNAMICS TO SALESFORCE

Undoubtedly, Dynamics 365 is a good ERP system with minimum CRM functionalities. Your growing business would need the functionalities of a fully matured CRM system. Here is where Salesforce steps in. The best part of using Salesforce as your next CRM is that it is easy to customize and can be integrated with almost any business app your company may be using. Here are some of the benefits of migrating to Salesforce.

• Saving the business budget that would be otherwise spent on maintaining redundant systems
• Unifying different business processes – even the international ones
• Having the opportunity to introduce a system-wide business policy that will be applicable to different divisions
• Adhering to data management best practices by cleansing, normalizing, de-duping, and enriching poor datasets
• Implementing stringent security standards and following user permissions
• Leveraging fully optimized functionalities to refine the processes
• Configuring and customizing the platform easily using Salesforce’s point-and-click tools
• Making legacy systems more scalable and agile so that they are aligned with business growth
• Making the most of hundreds of apps available on Salesforce’s AppExchange platform
• Improving native integration capabilities of the ERP system with the help of many apps available on AppExchange
• Experiencing a user-friendly and quick-to-respond system navigation
• Rolling out regular system updates – even security updates – and accessing all-inclusive guides on these update
• Accessing Salesforce’s educational portal – Trailhead – to discover unlimited and on-demand training content that is absolutely free
• Being part of a supportive and growing community of fellow Salesforce users and admins to get the answers to any questions you may have

A DETAILED DYNAMICS 365 CRM TO SALESFORCE MIGRATION ROAD MAP

You may not have undergone a CRM migration process earlier. So, here is the thing – this is not a one-day or one-week process. Migrating from Dynamics 365 to Salesforce needs time, money, and so many other resources. In some cases, the CRM migration plan may mimic a full-fledged implementation plan as well. Moreover, there are so many things to keep in mind – for instance, the relevance of objects and fields of a specific User ID.

No matter which CRM you are switching from, your migration project’s success may depend on different factors, including:

• What would your organization’s complexity be?
• What industry does your business belong to?
• How many system users would be working on the new CRM solution?
• What levels of customizations can be done on your legacy CRM solution?
• How many user-permission levels would your CRM system require?
• How many countries or regions does your business operate in?
• What level of tweaks would your CRM system require to align with your requirements?

Understand that every CRM migration path is unique. So, ensure that everything related to the CRM migration plan is on the table. Considering the fact that almost every CRM migration plan requires expert guidance, you should bring a Salesforce migration expert on board. Getting help from expert Salesforce consultants means you uncover approaches that may speed up the migration safely and may be feasible technically too. With the help of a Salesforce consulting company, you will be able to take the migration from paper to the real world.

Here are the common steps included in a Dynamics to Salesforce migration road map.

Step 1: Set Migration Goals

First and foremost, you will have to figure out the goals that have prompted you to undertake this CRM migration project. You have to understand what the old CRM system did not have that this new one will help you achieve. Moreover, you have to identify how you can overcome many migration challenges with the help of automation tools and allied technology. Additionally, you must engage with multiple teams across your company to generate a list of overall migration deliverables. The answers to the following questions will help you focus on migration goal-setting.

• What sort of goals have you envisioned for your company for the next five years?
• What would you define as your business’s biggest growth opportunities?
• Does your CRM have any on-the-face challenges or roadblocks? And why cannot they be removed with MS Dynamics CRM solution?
• Which business processes should be improved? And can they be refined using cutting-edge technology?
• Can you define the type of challenges your organization is experiencing at the moment because of a sub-optimal CRM solution?
• Does your company follow any strict data management best practices? Or are there any organization-wide data policies in place?
• What business processes and activities does your Dynamics CRM implementation support?

Moreover, make it a point that business units and teams agree on the vision you share for the future CRM system. You should make sure that every team member will benefit from your business switching to a new CRM solution.

Step 2: Speak To Salesforce Migration Experts

When you associate with a Salesforce consultation partner, you gain access to a rich experience that can help you boost your CRM processes with custom or out-of-the-box functionalities. Or the Salesforce consulting partner can even help you discover shortfalls existing in your current migration process. A good consultation company can factor in business specifics before creating a full-fledged CRM migration approach. Moreover, a Salesforce partner can help you select the right automation tools and products to support your migration seamlessly. Most Salesforce experts even analyze datasets while creating a solid checklist for data cleaning, mapping, and enrichment.

GStep 3: Get An Estimate On Budget And Time

The scope of a CRM migration project’s cost and time largely depends on your business’s expectations and requirements. If you do not have a clearly defined road map of steps included in your migration project, then it will be challenging to get an estimate. That is why you should get in touch with a couple of Salesforce consultants. Give the consultants a complete lowdown on your migration project’s requirements. Best of all, most Salesforce consulting companies offer a free consultation call where you can outline your project peculiarities.

Step 4: Cleanse, Enrich, And Duplicate Data

According to Gartner’s study, poor data quality can cause financial losses to the tune of millions of US dollars. Not just that, but poor data may also prevent a company from exploring a range of growth opportunities. If you have used a Dynamics CRM solution for quite some time, you may have many duplicate data entry sources. In that case, you will have to make sure your new CRM system does not get multiple data entries – after all, your Salesforce org needs to get accurate datasets. You have to check your business health and perform regular data checks. Moreover, you should lay down the rules for avoiding duplicate data entries. If, however, you have a lack of data sanitization standards, then even your new CRM system may get riddled with erroneous, duplicate, superfluous datasets. Here is a pro tip: Perform rigorous data profiling and cleansing before letting any dataset enter your targeted CRM system. Make sure the profiling and cleansing happen at the early stages of the project – much before the migration process begins. Data profiling even helps you analyze the quality of data and discover any data anomalies; additionally, profiling will also help you map the data that will facilitate data transition. Here are the key steps to profiling and cleaning datasets.

• Discover where, when, and how the datasets are stored.
• Define strict data standards, quality requirements, and other similar policies.
• Improve data hygiene based on your newly formed standards and policies.
• Evaluate the key resources of your bad data and the kind of hypothetical impact it may have on your new CRM system.
• Manually improve data quality and prevent bad data from entering your Salesforce org.
• Analyze whether the previous three stages in the migration road map have been executed properly. (If required, repeat all of the steps you performed in your migration journey once more.)
• Check the different fields present in your targeted solution and group the data according to the source CRM model. (When you notice that the targeted system includes fields that your old solution never had, take data from your legacy system and populate the fields of your new solution.)

Step 5: Get Started With Data Migration

Do you know the most challenging part of CRM migration? It has to be planning and checking the migration from a technical side. There are two solid approaches to data migration.

• Conducting the migration manually or using different automation tools
• Using custom CRM data migration services too

Planning to use a DIY approach to CRM migration? No doubt that this approach is a money-saver – but there is a pretty steep learning curve. The bottom line is that if you are transitioning your CRM from MS Dynamics 365 to Salesforce, you will have to read up on a number of tutorials, guides, and whatnot. But without proper guidance, data migration from one CRM vendor to another may become a laborious and time-consuming process. When you go ahead with personalized data migration services, you should focus on your business while a Salesforce expert will take care of data transitioning. Tying up with a Salesforce partner means you may easily prevent many problems that are likely to arise throughout the CRM migration process. A Salesforce migration partner will provide you with robust support across the migration process. Moreover, a Salesforce specialist will be ready to comprehensively answer your migration-related questions at the earliest. A Salesforce consultation company will give you professional guidance and key information on every step of data import. Such a company will help you analyze your migration needs and design an ideal data management approach, no matter how many records you need to transfer. If, however, you plan on proceeding on your own, then you must clearly define the migration milestones with a deadline for each one of them. Additionally, you must also outline the technical architecture of your new and old CRM systems so that there are no technical glitches happening at the eleventh hour.

Step 6: Test The Success Of CRM Migration

Last, you will have to test whether data migration has happened successfully. For this purpose, take any one data subset – and test it to see how it behaves. As a migration testing best practice, you should start with a small dataset and check whether the routing works as intended. Even analyze your CRM migration information to have a quick overview of the transition project in general. Once you are satisfied with how this process works, you can begin mixing data blocks simultaneously. If you do not view any errors throughout the process, then you may move a large number of data records from Dynamics CRM to Salesforce. Data execution can take place anytime, so it is advisable to begin the process at a time that does not disrupt your business operations. After you have ended the migration work, check the missing datasets. Also, check that every user is accessing data from the new data center in Salesforce. Once data migration is successfully done, perform an end-to-end audit of the entire system. That way, you will check whether any further modification is required.

GETTING STARTED WITH A RELIABLE SALESFORCE MIGRATION PARTNER

Migrating to or from Salesforce comes with the risk of business disruption. We are a trusted Salesforce migration service provider, offering lightning and data migration services. We have a proven Salesforce.com migration process that starts with assessing the design and requirements of migrating successfully. We bring end-to-end support to help you migrate from Dynamics 365 to Salesforce. To do that, we begin by identifying different functionality gaps present in the existing CRM solution; then, we frame the recommendations to address these shortcomings. We follow a time-honored migration strategy and some handy tools to make sure the transition from a CRM to Salesforce is smooth and fast. Connect with our team of Salesforce developers, admins, and consultants to get started with your migration journey.