Beyond basecamp…..

Getting to Infusionsoft (IF) base camp was a pretty easy walk but now we are into unsafe territory.  Data has been transferred BUT we still have leads coming into Salesforce due to web forms still being active on our website.

There is a finite period for when we start the crossover process but we will start to do it in stages.  We have to look at how we process heavy traffic reports such as Surveyone or Social Workplace as we need to be very sure that we have IF set-up correctly.  So what we’ll do, is move Surveyone over to Aweber as it is a tried and trusted system.  This gives us a known management task which we are comfortable with.  In the meantime, new reports which will be accessed directly from the new homepage will be set-up and fully tested in IF before we move everything over.  There is a safety element to this but experience tells me this is the best option.  New software systems never quite work as you think/hope and you have to be prepared for the unknown!

The porters are not quite where we hoped.  SF have pretty much disappeared even though we have an open case from over 2 weeks ago which is pretty critical to us – but they maybe know we have left them anyway!  The IF porters are busy running around the mountain, available when we shout but not quite as readily available as we’d hoped.  They do a good job when we get them but the time difference is significant so we have to wait until the end of the day before we move forward which means late night conversations.

And of course the day job still has to be done.  The data input service from IF is fantastic so at least we can send a lot of information over to them and it gets done quickly and well.  We are now at a critical stage where we have the theory but don’t really know the detail.  Measure twice, cut once is about right.  Undoing mistakes is however very easy unless we fall off a cliff……

A back-up system (e.g. Aweber) is critical; a real learning point to be aware of for anyone moving from one ATS to another ATS.  Data transfer is never as easy as we hope but, it forces you to clean up your data which is a very useful exercise.  Re-tagging is a good process which should result in better results as we can ensure the right people get the right level of information – we shall see!

As Justin King recently said; “Fix the problems and then step on the gas!”

Lets just say we are still in the garage half way through a service.