Sunday 28 January 2018

Figure It Out

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Its not that frequent that I get involved in data reconciliation’s, but strangely I have helped a few organisations with them in recent weeks. How do you go about checking that what you take from a legacy system, is what lands in your new system? Its even more complex when several legacy systems are coming into a single new system.

So, what should we be looking at?

Well hopefully, data will be extracted into either a staging database or intermediate CSV’s (Comma separated Value flat text files). As anyone will know who has been through this process, its usually something that is carried out by the client, rather than the supplier of the new system. Because of this, its generally not that difficult to generate some statistics at that stage.

When I was a key implementer, I used to have a big list of areas which would be on my main hit list, many of which should be able to be reconciled right to the penny. Examples include rent balances, debit charge, cost of open works orders etc. While grand totals are a great guide, its likely that differences need to be split by Owning Body, Area, Scheme, Trade Type, Needs Category, debit frequency, Current vs Former etc, to meaningfully be sure of the integrity of data.

For my peace of mind too, I always urge my clients to find good legacy reports, to reconcile extracted (staging) data, then data when it lands in the new target system. If these can be passed to Excel, some templates can be developed, to quickly check these. In some cases, I have helped clients create something that can be quickly compared within 15 minutes. This is crucial at migration time and also to have all this ready and pre-cooked.

In an ideal world, regular data cuts could be done, with checks in place, way ahead of the final go-live. All differences need to be chased down quickly, so final go-live will be reliable. Data migrated might include EDRMS documents, appointments from a dynamic scheduler, or other sources.

Its usually common cross-referencing between systems will be in use, to allow data migration. These should be considered and understood to provide a reliable reconciliation. In particular, spot checks of every combination, for individual type of code. E.G. every type of charge code, asset type code etc. Config of these cross-references , during set up needs to be carefully controlled, as does changes in the data extraction that might be done to accommodate these.

Common ‘gotcha areas’ include around tenancy movements. Provisional starts and ends for tenancies, can pretty much always be expected to affect voids and debit values and numbers. These can always be isolated and a decision made if these are held back the last few days of the legacy system, and perhaps manually set in the new system we are moving to.

For audit purposes, a full list of all system areas, legacy data source counts/totals and equivalents in the new system, should be created, before making a decision to go-live. If an agreed reconciliation cannot be agreed, I personally would never suggest its right to go live.

Figuring it out, you can expect, will always shake out some legacy data that needs to be data cleansed. That’s always a bit like an archaeological dig, and a subject for a whole future blog. Before you try to go live with a new system, ensure you have taken time to ‘figure it out’.

Related Post: Big data, much like adolescent sex, in many ways 


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Royal Blood - Figure It OutRoyal Blood - Figure It Out.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


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