EnglishHow To Migrate To Your New Forex CRM Provider Seamlessly
One of the hardest things about changing from one forex CRM to another is not knowing how the migration process goes. Your new Forex CRM provider might look good on the outside, but as we all know – it’s the inside that matters! Will the tech you’ve seen in the presentations you’ve had actually work in reality? Will your data appear in the way you need it to? Will you lose track of your IB structures? Will crucial information be lost along the way?
It’s a really trying time for brokers when deciding to take the plunge with a new Forex CRM software provider – wrought with stress and anxiety due to the unknown – and understandably so. The pressure to not only choose the right CRM provider but for the migration to go successfully within a specific deadline is immense, which is why it’s so important you put your brokerage in experienced hands with CRM providers who have the expertise and know-how to get it right. Below are some of the main things you need to do to have a fast, seamless, and successful migration process.
ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
The first thing you should know when migrating from one Forex CRM provider to another, is that it’s not that difficult if the company you’ve chosen to move to has had experience moving other brokers. Some questions you may want to ask your new provider are; how many companies have you migrated in the past year? What problems have you experienced in the past when migrating data? What guarantees do I have that you won’t lose our data during the migration? How do you check the migration was successful? Do you have references from other companies you have migrated to your Forex CRM that I can speak to before making my final decision? A good Forex CRM provider should be able to answer all of those questions, provide you with references, and set your mind at ease. If your new provider struggles to answer any of the above with anything but solid facts and pure confidence – keep looking.
KNOW THE PROCESS
The second thing you need to know is the exact process before taking a decision. How is migration actually done? What order do things get migrated in? What do I need to check and focus on during the process? This seems like an obvious thing to point out before moving from one CRM to another, but believe us when we say that you’d be surprised how many companies are clueless when it comes to how migration is performed, and disappointed when things go terribly wrong. Not knowing the migration process and dealing with inexperienced providers is a recipe for disaster – and sadly, is where a good chunk of our business comes from. First – know the timeline.
KNOW THE TIMELINE
Once you’ve decided on your new Forex CRM, you want to move yesterday, we know! There’s not a single broker who tells us to take our time! You’re excited about all the money you’re about the save, developer resources you can allocate elsewhere, and how much faster you’ll grow with the right tech behind you. You should be – but you also need to be realistic. A good CRM software provider will give you an accurate timeline for the move. If you want to move more than 500k worth of client data and documents and they’re telling you it can be done in a week – tread carefully. Successful migrations need time and more importantly, your cooperation. Your team need time to check that nothing is missing, that they know how to use the new CRM software, that your clients are about to be informed and things are in place to make them aware of a change, and that all tests have been done with no errors (such as registering, depositing, withdrawing etc) before you give the final ok. As you can imagine, this doesn’t take a day. Your CRM provider should be able to look at your current CRM and give you a proper time estimation. At FX BACK OFFICE, we give a week to a month time period for migration – depending on the size of the brokerage and the current state of affairs with the CRM provider they are already using. We’ve moved brands with less than 1000 clients, and brands with over a million. No brokerage is too big or too small to move to a better CRM.
KNOW THE DETAILS
Once you know the timeline and the general process of migration and you feel confident in your choice of new CRM software, it’s time to go through the finer points before the switch. How will your data be matched? Are there other outsourced providers you’re using? Is your new CRM provider integrated with those already, or should they integrate them? Are there additional costs associated with that? Will that delay the migration process? Is your new CRM provider integrated with the PSPs you use or will that need to be done too? Is there a cost for that? How long will it take? There’s a lot to think about and these questions are just a drop in the bucket of things that need to be thought out properly and considered during the migration process.
It’s important that your new CRM provider can explain to you exactly how your data will be matched – identify where there is a mis-match of information, what will happen if you have data that they don’t have the fields for, and if, where, and how that data can be stored. At FX BACK OFFICE we can customize almost anything, so if in the rare case you’ve got data we don’t have a field for, we can easily create it for you, and in some cases, you can create it yourself within our CRM. Likewise, with certain features or work-flows your clients or employees have become accustomed to - which you either created yourself (if you have your own CRM) or were created by your previous outsourced provider – your new CRM provider should be able to create and add those too.
CHOOSE WISELY
Moving CRM providers is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make as a brokerage, and if you get it wrong, it can really cost you – not only financially, but in terms of the speed and capacity in which your brokerage can grow. Flexibility is key when choosing a new CRM provider and the right one should be willing and able to customize and add things that are important to you. It’s not mandatory for you to know every little detail when it comes to migration – it’s not in your expertise nor do you have the time to learn each and every step that needs to be taken whilst running a brokerage - but choosing a provider that can concisely outline the main points for you so you get a clear idea of how and what will be moved – who asks the right questions, and has vast experience in migration of Forex CRMs – is your number one priority.
Talk to us today about migrating your brokerage from your current CRM provider.