Content migration is a complex process for every organization. It is an enterprise-wide data management process that is tedious and demands huge amounts of resources. Content migration is a challenging process since it can become extremely difficult if you have a lot of content to migrate. Therefore, many organizations are approaching a content migration process from the perspective of performing the bare minimum for meeting their objectives. That’s why organizations are focusing on what tool to provide for the content migration.

There are two methods for managing your organization’s content migration – automated or manual. So, you can either form a team to generate and migrate all the content manually, or you can make a use of numerous automated tools and make the whole migration process easier.

Manual Content Migration

Manual content migration is not always the harder method. It depends on the environments between which the data is transferred and the volume of data that needs to be migrated.

Now, let’s suppose that your organization has a data storage with 200 categories and 2000 products with additional descriptions and attributes. You have chosen an ECM platform with better features than your current one and now, all you have to do is transfer all data including hundreds of categories and thousands of products. How long will it take to manually transfer the database? The answer is – weeks, maybe months.

Manual content migration usually adds to the complexity of the whole process because of the following issues:

1. Slows down the whole process

Increasing the number of people that will do the job by hand only goes so far to resist this. You will either outsource the tedious work, or you will tie up your internal resources to do that by hand.

2. Inflexible

During a content migration process, content model changes are extremely common. Using the manual method for your content migration only means redoing the already migrated content.

3. Double entry of the content

A manual content migration can last weeks or even months. During that period all changes of the already migrated content must be logged and copied into two systems. The alternative is freezing the long content. This is not an issue with the automated content migration method.

4. Lack of improvements

Manual content migration is not promoting any intelligent improvements which are possible using the automated content migration method such as metadata enrichment, syntax checking, and data conversions.

The manual method of content migration should be considered only if heavy data editing is required or when the content is divided across various locations. This includes auditing your data to create data inventory and then evaluating the quality of each piece of content based upon your previously determined strategy.

Automated Content Migration

The era of automation increases the popularity of services and technologies which aim to make every organization’s burden easier and routine tasks optimized. It is a key part of eCommerce, and it is available for the task of automated content migration.

The manually repeating methods for copying over the content of the same nature now can be easily automated. If your organization is one that has a huge volume of content of the same nature, then a huge part of the migration can be automated. Using the automated method for your organization’s content migration will bring you a bunch of benefits:

1. Time saving

As we mentioned, migrating your content using the manual method is more complex and time-consuming process. You may spend months to complete the whole process if everything goes according to your plan. You can avoid this difficulty with the help of automated content tools like Caliente. The content migration will be automatically performed in just a few hours, and you will save much of your valuable time.

2. Service Availability

The good thing about automated content migration is that the whole process is performed with only minimal human involvement. You can start the migration anytime you want and from everywhere. This method excludes the errors and delays connected with human factors such as working hours, employee’s vacation, etc.

3. Excludes data duplication and loss

Using the manual method, you can miss or copy twice some data, and the more data you have, the bigger is the risk of mistaken data transfer. On the other hand, automated migration connects directly to your organization’s database and copies required content to the new database. Using automated content migration tool like Caliente will help you exclude the data duplication or loss and it will simplify the whole migration process.

4. No coding skills required

By migrating your content automatically, you don’t have to have special skills and deal with any programming tasks. The automated content migration tool will lead you through the migration steps, giving you hints what information you need to provide and things to do next. These tools are very helpful and are minimizing any risk of mistakes.

Using automated content migration tools will help you ease the burden and save time when you have a high volume of content to migrate. Choosing the manual method will only save you money, but the money you will spend on automated content migration tool don’t worth the efforts and time your organization will spend. On the other hand, choosing the automated method will make the whole migration process accurate, effortless and risk-free.

Key Takeaways

Migrating your content manually will contribute to natural and inevitable mistakes. Automating your migration will accelerate transactions, locate documents quickly and minimize human errors. Automated tools can help your organization save thousands of hours and also ensure a sustainable process for maintaining content.

Automated content migration tools like Caliente will help you automate the whole process of migration by giving you a library of tasks and templates that can be performed with one click. With Caliente, you can import content from external feed and process unlimited content files daily. Caliente is customized migration tool designed for large content migrations. It can migrate from and to various electronic formats, including but not limited to, ECM Documentum, ODBC compliant databases, eRoom, Alfresco, SharePoint and hot folders.

An automated content migration tool is a must have especially if you are an organization with a high volume of data. It will help you simplify the whole migration process and will save you a lot of efforts and time.

The automated content migration is our choice. What is yours? Let us know below.