To skip to the “how” – register here to learn how Gensquared and Snowflake helped HBC migrate their old legacy platform to Snowflake’s Data Cloud.
Companies of all sizes struggle with ageing and outdated legacy data platforms. They are expensive to maintain, difficult to scale or have limited integration capabilities. Most businesses desire data-driven insights but are quickly realizing their outdated legacy platforms impact their ability to make informed business decisions.
The decision to migrate from an old legacy platform to a cloud-based data platform can feel daunting, but the benefits far outweigh the risks. By keeping in mind the following three strategies for a successful data platform migration, you are setting yourself, your team and your project up for success.
Understand your own biases and the things you don’t know.
If there is one thing to know about biases, it’s that we all have them. And when faced with uncertainty, we tend to fall back on our previous experiences as guidance. How you approached your last IT project may not be the best predictor of what will work today. You could be in a different organization or teams, with varying skill sets, culture and potentially different technology. Each project requires its own approach to delivery. Take the time to understand your business needs and break up the work effort to align with those needs. Avoid building a project plan that is not aligned with those who are doing the work or doesn’t derive a lot of value quickly. Bottom line, don’t try to apply old patterns or solutions to a new and unique problem.
Take an agile and business-centric approach.
Focus on delivering value for the business as often and as early as possible. Approach this by understanding what your business users need, what they consider valuable and then marry up your technical solution to serve their needs. Businesses are dynamic and not static. People come and go, leadership changes and business priorities change. And factor in external forces like a pandemic – you need a team and a plan that is highly flexible and adaptable.
Build a team that can execute.
There are many reasons why a data platform migration project can fail. Not having a data team with the right skills and experience ranks right up at the top. The proliferation of data coupled with the need to quickly gain access to data insights is placing businesses & IT leaders under immense pressure. However, most organizations lack the knowledge around building a data management strategy and the skills to execute. Depending on your organization’s data & analytics maturity, consider a blended team vs outsourcing the entire project altogether. Perhaps you need to augment to address a skills gap or meet aggressive timelines. Or you simply don’t have a team in place to execute. Regardless of your reasons, a blended team helps you build your own internal capabilities and establish a faster knowledge transfer by retaining it internally.
“Theory is splendid but until put into practice, it is valueless.” James Cash Penney
In theory, overcoming biases, taking an iterative approach to delivering results using a blended team all sound great, but how realistic is it?
Join us on February 17th for a fireside chat with The Hudson’s Bay Company and learn just how realistic it is. Hear how HBC followed these three principles and successfully migrated their legacy platforms to Snowflake’s Data Cloud to create a single view of their customer retail analytics and decrease costs, all within very aggressive timelines.
This is a chat you don’t want to miss! Register now to save your spot.
