Success Story
LucaNet
Data migration for a unified customer experience.
- Migration of five legacy CRM systems to a unified corporate CRM system.
- Consolidation of about 310,000 customer data with the Customer Data Hub.
- Setup of 60 ETL routes and 40 customer-specific consolidation rules.
Unify customer experience.
#STORY
LucaNet is one of the leading providers of Corporate Performance Management and specializes in financial data management. With over 5,000 global customers in more than 50 countries and over 700 employees worldwide, a lot of customer data is hoarded quickly.
With its headquarter in Berlin, LucaNet has a total of 13 branches in 12 countries. In these subsidiaries, different systems were previously used for customer data management. The leading CRM system in the DACH region during the project start was MS-Dynamics, while other branches also had systems such as FileLinx, Hubspot, Pipedrive and TeamLeader in use as CRM. Most of the time, those systems were used independently, without consideration of the other subsidiaries and countries, therefore no common view of the entire customer base and central data quality measures was possible.
Hence, the goal was to introduce a consistent CRM and, before that, to consolidate and prepare the data from the different source systems. With the introduction of a new, consistent CRM, the business processes were to be unified and standardized throughout the company in order to have the ability to offer customers worldwide the same customer experience with LucaNet. In addition, reporting and evaluations were to be simplified and standardized.
The consolidation of five existing CRM systems to the new, leading Salesforce system was a major challenge due to the different data structures, data architectures and differences in data quality. In addition, a consistent pricing model for LucaNet software products was to be introduced across all units at the same time. The conversion of the pricing model was an additional challenge during the migration.
LucaNet was faced with the special task of rolling out the uniform pricing model and the introduction of the new CRM, including consolidation of the five legacy systems with approx. 310,000 data records, overnight so that all employees could start using the system at the same time. For this purpose, all existing systems had to be shut down beforehand.
At the beginning of the project, LucaNet considered performing the migration internally. However, it quickly became clear that it would be difficult to merge the data without a strong partner. Especially since the implementation was not to be carried out via a big bang scenario, but via an iterative path with delta handling.
The target picture for LucaNet included a consolidation of the different data as well as an improvement of the data quality. The consolidation rules, which have been already defined in advance were to be observed. Since the conversion was to be iterative, a strong partner was needed. Also, the conversion of the pricing model had to happen overnight, which is another reason to seek the support of an experienced partner.
Migration with focus on the customer.
#SOLUTION
The requirements for Uniserv were thus formulated quite clearly: a fixed time schedule with regard to the GoLive, an iterative consolidation of around 310,000 customer data from five existing CRM systems, and delta handling of the data over the duration of the project. All of this was to lead to a noticeable improvement in data quality for employees in order to ensure acceptance of the entire migration project.
The project started with a proof-of-value phase, which initially captured the actual scope of the necessary data transformation and was able to demonstrate the expected increase in quality.
Within the framework of the subsequent data consolidation project, broad and deep experience around the matching and merging of data within the framework of migration projects was necessary in order to be able to maximally increase the data quality during the merging. For this purpose, the Customer Data Hub (CDH) was used, which provides all data quality competencies of Uniserv:
- While the loading of the original data, the data is been translated into the new data model,
- then based on Uniserv's own reference data it is been validated and corrected, if necessary,
- afterwards based on the Uniserv entity resolution, duplicate records are identified (matching),
- which are then merged into the final new golden records by the individually configurable merging.
- All new records are finally provided for the new target system.
One of the advantages that became apparent during the migration with the CDH is that the CDH's web interface in particular was very helpful during the migration: Via the data steward interface, all steps of the data transformation can be viewed and monitored, and in questionable cases, decisions can be made manually by the data stewards. In addition, a comprehensive documentation jointly maintained by the entire project team enabled all participants to refer to and further refine the consolidation and matching rules at any point in time and status.
The transformation of the source data to the new target data model ultimately involved more than 60 ETL routes. The merging of duplicates and the implementation of over 40 customer-specific consolidation rules led to a consolidation of the total data volume to 125,000 group-wide business partners. The first seven-month project phase was able to iteratively implement the majority of the data transformation as well as the data merge, so that all LucaNet employees were able to gain a good insight into the new data quality and report back final feedback during the first Salesforce test phase.
In the subsequent three-month delta phase, final corrections to the consolidation and transfer formats were implemented so that LucaNet data quality could be improved to the maximum at GoLive. The data consolidation project thus ensured the acceptance of the CRM migration and took LucaNet a big step forward in forging ahead its customer acquisition in a targeted, data-based manner.
"The migration project ran smoothly. Uniserv was able to quickly identify the requirements, address the challenges and also knew the sticking points in the project through experience. The open and honest communication from Uniserv was the right mindset for us to be able to manage such a time-critical project together."
Sabeel Rana Asghar, Team Lead People and Organization Strategy, LucaNet AG
Consolidated data for a targeted customer approach.
#SUCCESS
By migrating with CDH, the data was quickly and efficiently migrated from the legacy systems to the new leading system. Users at LucaNet are very satisfied with the prevailing data quality in the new system. Data cleansing also took place as part of the migration, so that only cleansed and consolidated data was transferred to the new system.
The high focus on data quality during the project also meant that the risk of data loss was very low. Thanks to Uniserv's expertise in customer data, duplicates could be significantly reduced, thus creating a clean data basis for the new system. The creation of golden records during the migration process has thus contributed to a comprehensive view of the customers. The resulting cleansed database now supports LucaNet in targeting customers across all locations.
Overall, the project has shown that it makes sense to consolidate and prepare the data before migration. In this way, the data is first cleansed, merged and then provided as a new data set for a central system. This reduces the risk of data loss. Data quality remains high throughout the entire process.
In summary:
- The migration was possible quickly and efficiently with regard to the data.
- Restarting with a new data quality was a highlight for the migration project.
- All departments were active participants in the project via the data stewards and thus actively contributed to the company's transformation.
- Group-wide implementation of marketing automation campaigns for customer acquisition are now possible.
- Consistent customer care and customer service throughout the Group are possible - thanks to the merger.
- The prerequisite for new digital business models such as digital license management has been created.
- The path for high-quality master data management in the future has been laid.
About LucaNet
LucaNet was founded in 1999 with the vision of developing a software solution that offers planning, controlling and consolidation in a single tool. Since then, the company has grown to become a worldwide leading provider of corporate performance management software for finance. With more than 5,000 loyal customers in over 50 countries and offices in China, Singapore, the USA and a strong European presence, LucaNet employs over 700 people worldwide.
More information at www.lucanet.com
