Let’s imagine, as part of a new Salesforce implementation, you need to migrate data from a legacy system. The legacy system contains people and companies and sales opportunities. So, how much data should you migrate?
Most organizations will want all the accounts and contacts, regardless of when the last contact or activity was. That makes sense, and is considered master data.
When dealing with transactional data however, it’s probably unnecessary to go back to day 1, unless we’re talking about a handful of years.
For example, for financial systems and tax records, it’s customary to include 7 years of transactional data, not including the current year. Today being in the middle of 2023, that means 2016 to 2022.
For donations, it’s common to migrate 5 years of transactional data. This provides enough data for segmentation and allows a sufficient accurate calculation for the average donor lifespan.
Otherwise, the minimum is around 2 years.
Also keep in mind you don’t want to migrate too much data because of storage costs. Salesforce was not meant to store data and files long term. The costs to have more storage than what you are initially allocated is considerable.
The takeaway
Plan to migrate only the absolute minimum amount of data from a legacy system into Salesforce. If there are requirements for more, consider providing an archive of the legacy system in another format. This could be a .csv file, a MS Access database, or a data warehouse.