When Sizing up an Alternative ATS Data Migration is Key Concern

When Moving to a New ATS

Disruptions and unexpected events can often provide small business owners with an incredible amount of stress and sleepless nights. One particularly difficult situation is when your Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) vendor is no longer in business and able to provide you software to run your recruiting business. It turns out the HR Software market is constantly reinventing itself and, therefore, the volatility in the ATS business can provide situations in which recruiting agencies are left searching feverishly for alternative ATS solutions.

When this happens it can cause quite a stir and cause uneasiness about how the business will remain productive–while the search is on for a new software solution. Two initial concerns that recruiting managers care about are: data migration to a new system and getting everyone trained and on board with the new system. There is also the concern of the costs associated with making a change in software.

Recently a technology recruiting firm who switched to Crelate Talent said the following about the fear of changing to an alternative ATS, “We were hesitant to consider change because of the fear of disruption associated with data conversion and learning curve.” This fear isn’t without merit as sometimes the data conversion process can prove to be nerve racking. Crelate has had data sent to us in many ‘interesting’ ways, over the years, as we talked about recently in an article on “Respecting your Data.” We are doing everything possible to curb fears and help make the switch go as smoothly as possible.

Fear of Data Migrations Can Cause Sleepless Nights

In a two-part series we will outline Crelate’s approach to making the transition a new ATS as painless as possible. In this article we will tackle data migrations from your old system. We understand the anxiety that can result when changing software systems and have processes in place to ensure things go smoothly and recruiters are up-and-running quickly after making the switch.

Crelate’s migration experts have done 1000’s of collective migrations ranging from excel spreadsheets to complicated migrations for Fortune 100 companies. What’s more, we have migrated from modern ATS/CRM platforms as well as many now-defunct systems, built on ancient technology. Also, we have helped recruiting professionals migrate over from over 40 other recruiting and CRM products. The upshot is we have pre-built migration approaches ready to go.

 

1-2-3 Guide to How Crelate Does Data Migrations

Step 1 – Discovery & Consultation

Once you decided to go with Crelate we will take the time with you to understand how you use your data, what data you need, and what data you don’t need. For many businesses it’s easy to get databases that have a lot of extraneous information that isn’t vital to business. By going through the data clean up and discovery phase we can help you start fresh with a super-useful database of critical data.

Step 2 – Data Migration & Testing

After the discovery and consultation part of the process the real magic begins. All migrations are done at a reasonable pace (generally it takes 1-2 weeks) and we ensure that you are part of the entire process, every step of the way. Data is always migrated into at Test environment and we will help you spot check and verify things before we take your data live.

Step 3 – Verification & Go Live

We work with your time-line and with your business/business practices so as to cause as little disruption as possible. Our goal is for your team to have no downtime while the data conversion process is going on. Therefore, we often do late night and weekend cut-overs to ensure as little break as possible.

Data Migrations Made Affordable

All businesses small, medium, or large are concerned about the potential costs associated with making a change to a new software solution. Crelate is acutely aware of these concerns and has a pricing plan that makes the data migration affordable and the switch to an alternative ATS as smooth as possible. Pricing for data migrations depends on which subscription you choose and whether you are on the annual or monthly payment plan. 

The other variable that influences cost is how big the data migration is. We break it down between converting just some resumes vs. migrating over from a competitor (with a more robust database to convert). For some plan options the data conversion process is free of charge (if payment is done annually).

Crelate Customer Reviews Tell the Story

One of the best ways to judge whether or not a software provider is doing a good job is to read reviews from folks that have converted recently. Here’s a sample of what recruiters are saying about the data conversion process with Crelate.

 

Within 1 hour of my using the software, I had a listing of clients already imported, candidate resumes parsed and was ready to go with various workflows.

From a person that has used MANY of the big name tools out there – I’ve never used one that I could learn so quickly and get up and running so rapidly.

Our challenge, as a contingency based search firm, is providing enough ‘high touch’ service to satisfy each client’s nuanced requests, while maintaining enough velocity and volume to continuously feed the candidate and client pipeline. A flexible, reliable, and powerful ATS is critical to achieve these goals.

Crelate was suggested by another small recruiting firm…our initial fears were alleviated when speaking with Crelate, mostly for two reasons: (1) Crelate’s technology is intuitive, flexible, and really well designed and (2) Crelate’s people are SUPER responsive, thoughtful, creative and resourceful. Crelate made us feel as though we were a 1000 employee prospect.

The best part of Crelate is how easy it was to get started. Within hours of install, we were fully operating our business.

If you are in the market for a new Applicant Tracking Solution give our Sales Team a shout and let’s begin the conversation.

Filed under: Business Development