How to plan for a migration: a Q&A with Manjot Sohi
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Migration can be a harrowing process for organizations. The endeavor of overhauling a platform can leave a wide margin for error. But the migration process doesn’t have to be all headaches and sleepless nights.
To learn about how organizations can best prepare for a migration, we sat down with Manjot Sohi, Vice President of Solutions Architecture at Episode Six. Manjot has over 30 years of experience in the payments industry, in a wide variety of roles including product management, sales, delivery and consulting. Prior to joining E6, Manjot was a global payments product head, where his focus was building & enhancing digital P2P payment rails. We talked with Manjot about migration preparation, common pitfalls, and how to avoid surprises along the migration journey.
What are the most important aspects of migration readiness?
Firstly, the organization must be prepared for the process. They can prepare by setting up a specific change management structure, meaning they can identify who will take on which role in the migration process. This way the organization has a solid overview of the migration, and a plan to execute it.
Another aspect of migration to prepare for is the dual state, or the transition between the original platform and the new one. This is especially applicable to a phased migration. A client might be dealing with millions of cards and may opt for a phased approach to mitigate risk in the process. The question now becomes: how does the company run two states, one old and one new? How do they manage that process, and how do they ensure that regular business continues seamlessly?
If I go to the business and tell them, “Hey, I need one or two years to take your million-card portfolio, but I don’t want you to make changes in the meantime,” the business is not going to be too pleased! So the risk occurs when a business is launching a product on the new platform while at the same time, they’re still marketing cards and launching products on the old system. How do you keep the two in sync?
Another challenge is stretching your teams too thin, as in when you have the same team working on usual business as well as the migration. You need dedicated resources. That is also one of the top, key challenges organizations may not think about, and obviously there's a cost aspect to augmenting your person power.
Organizations need to consider how to manage this issue, because their own people have the expert knowledge. So, you need those experts for the migration, but you’re also running a business that you need to maintain and prioritize. If you have an issue within the business itself, you're going to prioritize addressing that, instead of devoting time to the migration. The migration then tends to take a backseat and can get pushed down the road. This is why a designated migration team is vital.
What is the most common pitfall of migration for customers?
A common pitfall is making technology decisions without considering your internal technology and people capabilities. Organizations might see something hot on the market and say “Hey, this is the new shiny tool. I'm going to buy this without realizing that it doesn't fit well with my ecosystem.” Clients might purchase a solution that’s not compatible with their technology. An organization wants the latest and greatest, of course. But it might not fit in with their overall technical landscape or the direction that they want to go.
What is an aspect of migration that you think is most surprising for companies?
The timelines always surprise a company if they haven't fully assessed the process. Clients often expect a timeline of a couple of months, and the reality of a migration always catches people off guard. They assume migration will be quick, easy and simple.
The other aspect is program management. The client believes that when they get a vendor, that vendor will do all the heavy lifting of every aspect. But in reality, there are many different vendors that support various applications.
I think sometimes people are caught off guard about how much coordination is needed around the planning and the scope of the migration. This includes considerations like: what they need to do to actually get it started, and how they can take it to a logical ending. These are elements that have nothing to do with the actual technical migration, but instead the planning and the reach of it.
What are vital steps that E6 takes in the migration process?
First, I would say we accurately pitch the time to market. Second, our team has vast experience in migrating millions of customers and cards. We bring with us extensive knowledge of best practices. We advise the client on how they need to set up the whole program, and how to go about planning it. Third, we have our own unique and specific toolkit that helps with migrations onto E6. We guide our clients to prepare samples files using our templates, and load the information to validate the data and process. This level of pre-testing means that we can accelerate the process and mitigate risk, which makes the entire migration run as smoothly as possible.
Ready to start your migration journey? Contact us today.
About E6
E6 helps banks and brands create payment products their customers love. We provide ledger and cards technology that can power almost any payments use case. Our cloud-based platform, TRITIUM®, is designed to fit into your existing tech stack, so you can easily build market-leading products without disrupting ongoing operations. Our solutions are scalable, flexible, and powerful, giving you the ability to stay ahead of the market and strengthen your business.
With over 50 enterprise clients processing transactions in 29 countries, E6 is trusted by banks and brands around the world. TRITIUM offers real-time API processing, powers thousands of transactions per second, and offers market-leading compliance, security, and reliability with over 99.99% uptime and 24/7 support. Our technology is proven to make even the most ambitious product roadmap a reality.