What to do with your transaction history
New system deployments trigger an important question: what should you do with your transaction history in your legacy ERP systems? Over the years, companies collect enormous amounts of transactional data about their sales, purchasing, production, distribution, etc. This data is very useful: it helps to analyze customer behavior, vendor relationships, plant performances, warehouse inefficiencies, etc. Companies, rightfully, do not want to lose this data when they transition to a new system. Unfortunately, trying to move the transaction history to the new system will be a futile effort. Let me explain why.
New systems are highly integrated. Supply chain transactions trigger real-time financial postings. You cannot simply insert supply chain transactions that happened in the past (also referred to as closed transactions) into a new system.
For example, you cannot import a closed sales order transaction. That would involve importing it as an open order in the past and going through all the picking, packing, invoicing stages to correctly record it in the new system. This is because the new system needs to record the financial transactions at each step of the supply chain process. There are no shortcuts.
The best you can do is to take a snapshot of the business. This snapshot should include two key areas. The first area is the balances that will act as starting points for the new system such as account balances in financials, on-hand inventory levels in the supply chain, etc. The second is the open transactions. These are the transactions that are not financially posted in the legacy system. They are open sales orders, purchase orders, production orders, transfer orders, etc.
Note that you are likely to have these transactions at different stages and they may involve partial quantities. For instance, you may have a partially shipped sales order. The portion that needs migration is the part that has not shipped yet. Production orders can get complex. You need to account for the stage the production order is in, what the work-in-process quantity you have on-hand is, and how much time is left to finish the order. Due to this complexity, it is best to minimize the open transactions as much as possible during the go-live. Most companies try to close as many open shipments, receipts, productions, and transfers as they can prior to go-live.
This does not mean that you need to completely abandon your closed transactions in the legacy system. Many companies move the data into a database that can be queried later.
If your new system allows, you can create forms for your business to dive into this history without migrating it. In worst-case scenarios, you may keep your legacy system running for some time until you build enough history in your new system.
There can be exceptions if the data is highly valuable. An example might be a customer purchase history for a direct-to-consumer business. A call center representative or retail store may need access to such a history. Some systems provide dedicated tables to store the purchase histories without going through the integrated supply chain financial posting mechanism.
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My name is Cem and this has been another gem.
