20 Years of Migration Lessons - Distilled for Life Science Leaders

Migrations in life sciences aren’t just IT projects - they’re business-critical transformations directly tied to compliance, operational efficiency, and long-term business value.

Across all these projects, a few key lessons stand out.

Here are the top takeaways for life science leaders considering a migration:

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✅ Business & IT must align from Day 1.

A migration solves business problems - retiring legacy systems, improving data quality, or speeding up processes. Clear business goals drive successful migrations.

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✅ Right-sized compliance and control are critical.

Full validation and documentation are essential when migrating GxP data —that’s a given. But even for non-GxP, business-critical migrations, having the right level of compliance and control helps ensure data integrity, traceability, and long-term trust in the new system. It’s about balancing risk with practicality.

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✅ Data quality makes or breaks the outcome.

“Garbage in, garbage out” is still true. Migration is the perfect opportunity to clean house - archive, clean, or enrich your data before moving it into your future system.

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✅ Plan for the people, not just the data.

User adoption determines long-term success. Involve stakeholders early, communicate benefits, and support them after going live. A migration is only successful when people trust and use the new system.

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✅ Test like your business depends on it - because it does.

Dry runs, data validation, and pre-migration alignment are essential, especially when dealing with critical regulated documents. Every missed document could become a future compliance risk.

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✅ Always have a rollback plan.

Even with the best preparation, things can go wrong. Knowing how to back out safely (without losing data or trust) is a must-have insurance policy for any migration.

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✅ Focus on long-term value, not just go-live.

A successful migration isn’t just clean data in a new system—it unlocks faster processes, better compliance, and a foundation for digital transformation. Use the migration to position your business for future growth.

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The Bottom Line:
Migrations aren’t just IT exercises; they’re strategic opportunities. Done right, they don’t just move data; they improve compliance, efficiency, and business agility.

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