The no-drama CRM migration checklist

Before anyone exports a CSV

• Name one migration owner and one decision-maker for disputed fields.
• List the objects you actually use: companies, people, opportunities, cases, tasks, notes, and files.
• Separate required history from data that is merely old.
• Write down the unique key for each object before matching anything.
• Freeze new custom fields until the target model is agreed.

Clean the meaning, not just the formatting

1. Define every lifecycle stage in one sentence.
2. Decide which system wins when company names, owners, or statuses conflict.
3. Normalize dates, currencies, countries, phone numbers, and empty values.
4. Quarantine duplicates instead of guessing which record should survive.
5. Map each source field to a destination field or explicitly discard it.

Rehearse with a small slice

Import 25–50 representative records first. Include a messy company, a person with multiple email addresses, an open opportunity, a closed case, and a record with attachments. Ask the people who do the work to verify the result.

Cut over deliberately

• Announce a clear write freeze in the old system.
• Take a final export and retain it unchanged.
• Run the documented transformation and keep an error file.
• Reconcile record counts by object and status.
• Spot-check relationships, ownership, dates, amounts, notes, and permissions.
• Keep the old system read-only until the acceptance window closes.

The acceptance question

Do not ask only whether every row arrived. Ask whether a salesperson, support lead, and delivery or customer-success owner can each complete their next representative task without reopening the old CRM.