Whether you are migrating from an old ad sales management software or subscription management platform, we can help you. If your most up-to-date customer information resides in Xero or QuickBooks, we can synchronize it over to RunMags to give you a smooth start.

There are usually a five different steps involved in migrating data from a legacy system to RunMags.

1) Identify data sources

For obvious reasons, you first need to decide what data you are going to use. Is there one single database or does each sales rep have their own spreadsheet with client contact details? Do you have several different lists in MailChimp that need to be vetted? Spend some time as a team and map out your data sources and the state of the data in them.

Many platforms sport an open database so it's possible to extract data. From cloud based platforms it's often possible to request an export of the entire database into CSV tables. Gone are the days when it was impossible to get hold of the data that you rightfully own.

2)  Duplicate records

It's well worth the investment to spend some time to clean your data before we import it into RunMags. We have written a Do-It-Yourself guide on how to do this and we've also prepared some templates that you can use to structure customer data for both advertisers and subscribers. If you do this work yourself and furnish our templates populated with your data, we do the import without any extra charges beyond our onboarding fee.

3) Data mapping

Our templates mentioned above is a simple way of mapping how the data should be migrated. The customer's name, address, phone numbers, etc. should populate the corresponding fields in RunMags. Bringing all the data into one spreadsheet can be somewhat tedious work, but it's not difficult in any way. Migrating subscribers and subscription data tend to be the most challenging part simply because many legacy platforms never has a very good data structure for record keeping.

If you want to migrate more than just customer contact information, i.e. opportunities, contracts, email, activities, etc. this can also be done. It is a bit more cumbersome though and usually takes some time to identify which data tables we should import and how to map the fields. The Magazine Manager is one system that we frequently get asked to help with so we have developed a method for extracting the entire MSSQL database from the Magazine Manager and mapping the data to the corresponding tables in RunMags. That way you will be able to migrate to RunMags with a complete history of customers, proposals, contracts and magazines from Magazine Manager.

4) Transformation & translations

RunMags was developed for global use which is why we are using international formatting standards for date and time fields. Addresses are also set up to work in every country on the planet. Is most migration projects, transforming and translating data into "RunMags speak" is usually an easy task. We just need to be aware of how the data is formatted in the old system.

5) Trial migration review

We've seen step 1-4 take anything between 1-90 days. Once those steps are completed, the import is performed in a few minutes and we can review the data in RunMags. You simply look up some 3-5 advertisers and subscribers and verify that no data is missing, that the data has been mapped to the correct fields and that sales orders and subscriptions have been correctly created.

Consult with us

Schedule some time to talk to us about your legacy data and we'll let you know what your options are. Chances are that we can help you.