Spreadsheet & legacy system replacement

Area: Software Systems & Business Solutions · Usual shape: migration + replacement system · The core risk: the data

What stalls these projects is not building the new system; it is the fear of losing what is in the old one — and that fear is well placed. We start from the data, not the screens: we work out what your files actually contain, extract and clean it, and run old and new side by side until you trust it, before anything gets switched off.

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What this solves

The business runs from one enormous shared workbook nobody dares restructure.
The system only runs on one machine, and that machine is old.
The vendor has disappeared and nothing can be changed.
Only one employee understands how the files fit together.

What we build

Discovery of what the current file or system actually does, including the undocumented parts.
A data inventory and an honest assessment of its quality.
Extraction, cleaning and consolidation.
A migration plan with written acceptance criteria.
The replacement system itself.
A parallel-running period with reconciliation between old and new.
Training and handover for the people who will live in it.
Retiring the old system as a planned step, not an event.

Where it is used

A business run from one large shared workbook.
A desktop system running on a single machine.
A system whose vendor has disappeared.
Consolidating data from branches that operated separately.

What this does not include

We do not guarantee recovery of corrupted or unbacked-up data.
We do not guarantee that the old vendor will cooperate.
We do not undertake to reconcile historical balances that never reconciled.
We do not provide an accounting audit.

How the work goes

We read the data before we design anything, because it is where the real rules are hiding.
We write acceptance criteria for the migration and agree them before starting it.
We run old and new together until the numbers match and you believe them.
We switch the old one off as a decision, on a date, with a way back.

Custom business systems
for the design of what replaces it.
Inventory, orders & operations systems
when the files being replaced are stock records.
System & service integrations
when the old system has to keep feeding the new one for a while.
Technical audit & project takeover
when the honest first step is assessing what you have.

Questions about this service

Will we lose any data?

That is what the acceptance criteria and the parallel-running period exist to prevent. We do not switch anything off until the numbers reconcile and you have seen them reconcile.

How long does parallel running last?

Until it is boring — typically a full business cycle, so that month-end and any periodic process has run at least once in both. We agree the exit condition rather than a date.

What if our data is messy?

It usually is, and cleaning it is part of the work rather than a precondition. What we cannot do is invent data that was never recorded, and we will tell you early where that is the case.

Can we keep working during the migration?

Yes — that is the point of running the two side by side. Stopping the business to migrate it is rarely necessary and never popular.

What if the old system refuses to export?

It happens. There are usually other routes, and we establish which exist before committing to a plan. Where none exist, we say so before you have spent anything.

Tell us what you are running on now.

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