Conversions: New Systems Implementations.

Investment system conversions require far more than the obvious conversion of existing data. The new system frequently has many new features and data elements, which is largely why many organizations elect to upgrade. As a consequence, it is usually necessary to augment the old data with many new data elements and do a substantial amount of data cleanup.

A new system also presents many opportunities for process re-engineering. These process changes necessitate that existing staff understand and train on new workflows and procedures. The result is an organization that functions more smoothly and works together toward a common goal. This perspective demonstrates why a systems conversion is a much bigger problem than merely migrating legacy data to a new system environment.

ICC has also found that client business teams frequently wish their new system to interface to many new data sources and systems. This does not however represent a one time event to clean up and augment the existing data. Rather, it becomes an ongoing process of interfacing to several vendors. Each of these interfaces is a little like a "mini conversion" by itself and often consists of a series of projects that consume enormous organizational time and resources.

An example of a list of tasks to perform in an investment system conversion might look like this:

Project planning
Technical environment preparation
Functional testing
Training
Data conversion
Data cleanup
Client specific function development and testing
Reconciliation and financial impact
External interfaces
Reports development, testing and user sign-off
Parallel input to old and new systems (and catch-up)
Creation of daily, weekly and monthly production job streams
Issue tracking
Production cutover planning
Workaround documentation
Workflows and procedures documentation
Ongoing database administration and user environment preparation
New release testing and implementation

Organizations frequently underestimate the effort and resources necessary to successfully complete an integration project. It is connecting the parts of the problem with reasonable timelines and resources and dependencies that will turn this into a real plan. Most organizations do a project like this very infrequently. They need to focus the existing staff on the maintenance of the ongoing system as opposed to a large number of one-time events that will probably not be repeated in their careers.