Moving from an older BI platform to a modern one is a chance to simplify, but it's also where confidence in reporting gets lost. When a revenue figure in the new tool differs from the old one, adoption stalls. Plan the migration around trust, not screens.
Inventory before you rebuild
- Export the list of reports and dashboards, with their owners, from the current platform.
- Pull usage logs to see which reports were actually opened recently, and by whom.
- Retire what nobody uses, and consolidate near-duplicates before migrating anything.
Define each metric once
Legacy estates often calculate the same metric differently in several reports. Agree each definition with the metric's business owner and implement it once, in a governed semantic layer or shared data model, so every dashboard reads from the same logic.
- Write the definition in plain language, including filters and edge cases such as refunds or cancelled orders.
- Record who approves changes to it.
- Version definitions alongside the transformation code.
Reconcile in parallel
Run old and new side by side for an agreed period. Compare key figures automatically at the same grain and time window, investigate every difference, and record whether it's a bug or a deliberate fix to an old inconsistency.
Test the data, not just the visuals
- Add automated tests for freshness, row counts, uniqueness and accepted values in your pipelines.
- Alert the data team before business users notice a broken dashboard.
- Watch usage of the new platform to find reports people still open in the old one.
Switch off deliberately
Set a date to make old reports read-only, and a later one to remove access. Train power users first so they can support their teams, and keep a simple way to request anything that's missing.
Planning a migration? Our BI Migration service covers inventory, modeling and reconciliation.