Keep the information staff still need to use.

Prepare the next system without losing the references and documents that give a record its meaning.

Choose the destination deliberately

An old export may contain duplicates, obsolete contacts and attachments with unclear ownership. We identify the dataset, the people responsible and the tasks the new system must support. Your business decides appropriate retention and access with its responsible adviser.

Migration work can cover field mapping, character handling, trial imports, document transfer, duplicate review and reconciliation. Keep identifiers separate from quantities so leading zeros and meaningful text survive. Include representative English, Afrikaans and isiZulu names or content where your users need them.

Try complete cases

A row count cannot show that a document still belongs to the right job. Ask the future operator to find a sample customer, follow its history and identify the current attachment in the private trial. Uncertain records should have a review route instead of being guessed into a category.

Agree when changes stop in the old system, how late updates are handled and who can pause or reverse the move. A recovery plan must be usable by the people responsible for the next working day. Keep sensitive exports out of ordinary project messages.

Move a complete working case, including the late change

Use a fictional customer whose job still carries paper reference 0046. Its display name has an approved spelling correction, the first report is restricted history and a revised attachment is the current working document. The trial must preserve the exact job reference, link both documents to the right record and make the approved current version clear to the future operator. A similar display name on another customer is a matching question, not permission to merge the records.

Now add a second service request after the agreed export cutoff. Record it in the cutover reconciliation so it is deliberately transferred or kept in an agreed temporary process; do not hide it by counting only rows in the first export. The responsible owner decides which history and access relationships belong in the destination. Unknown language values or document versions go to that owner for review. Ask the covering operator to find the late request and current report before deciding the move is ready.

Bring a safe export sample and one complete case to the discussion. Migration may be a separate scope or part of application repair or a website rebuild.