Just finished migrating from Salesforce to HubSpot (again… don't ask), and I swear the actual data transfer was the easy part. The three weeks *before* that? Pure data archaeology.
It felt like 80% of the project was just untangling years of bad habits. We had:
* "Closed-Won" deals with $0 amount.
* Custom "Country" fields with entries like "USA," "US," "United States," and "America."
* A "Lead Source" field with 47 unique values, including "word of mouth," "wordofmouth," and "WOM."
The mapping part exposed so much inconsistency. When you have to decide which of those country entries maps to HubSpot's standardized "Country" property, you realize there's no single source of truth.
I'm curious—does anyone else budget 75% of their migration timeline for data cleansing? What's your process? Do you:
* Clean in the old system before extracting?
* Extract, then use a staging area/CSV and tools like OpenRefine?
* Just fix the big stuff and clean as you go in the new CRM?
The worst part is knowing that in two years, when I inevitably check out the next shiny platform, I'll probably have to do it all over again. 😅 The cycle continues.
Still looking for the perfect one