In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, staying with outdated systems like SharePoint or other legacy platforms can significantly hinder your organization’s growth and efficiency. For CEOs and IT managers, the idea of migrating to a new platform can seem overwhelming, especially considering the substantial investments already made in SharePoint development—a classic example of the sunk cost fallacy. However, with the right approach and tools, such as Avokaado’s Operational Intelligence Platform (OIP), the transition can be not only seamless but also a catalyst for increased transparency and compliance. This guide will walk you through the step-by-step process of migrating from a legacy system to a modern, more efficient platform.
Why Consider Migrating from SharePoint (or Any Legacy System)?
Before diving into the migration process, it’s essential to understand why moving away from legacy systems is crucial. Platforms like SharePoint, while once revolutionary, may no longer meet the demands of modern business environments, particularly in areas such as automation, integrations, and data management. Let’s take a closer look at the pain points associated with legacy systems and how Avokaado’s OIP addresses these challenges:
- Workflow Automation
- SharePoint Pain Point: Complexity of creating and managing workflows, including integrations, which require custom development
- OIP Solution: Create document, approval, signing, lifecycle management, and other workflows as you want and integrate seamlessly with other enterprise information systems
- Electronic Signatures
- SharePoint Pain Point: Require custom development and integration
- OIP Solution: Avokaado integrates with global signing solutions like Signicat/Dokobit and SignNow.
- Data Management
- SharePoint Pain Point: Lack of automation in extracting and updating metadata fields and data management per document type as legacy systems are built on Document/file formats, not on data.
- OIP Solution: Utilizing AI and ML technologies to extract and update metadata fields automatically and accurately. Create as many document types with unique data models as necessary in any language.
- Complexity
- SharePoint Pain Point: Complex SharePoint interface and difficulties in managing permissions and access controls.
- OIP Solution: Intuitive user-friendly interface simplifies the user experience, making it easier for users to navigate, customize, and manage permissions and access controls effectively.
- Collaboration
- SharePoint Pain Point: Complexity or limitations in user permissions and access control hinder effective collaboration. Outside the company collaboration is impossible. No questionnaire-based collaboration options for data intake and negotiations.
- OIP Solution: Effective collaboration options with internal and external stakeholders as well as with other information systems for data inputs. First instance platform for creating a new business contact or hiring new employees.
- Mobile Accessibility
- SharePoint Pain Point: Limited or inconsistent mobile access to SharePoint content and features.
- OIP Solution: Mobile-friendly interface ensures seamless access to content and features across different devices and screen sizes. It provides a consistent user experience, enabling users to access and collaborate on documents while on the go, including approval and signing flows.
- Integration Challenges
- SharePoint Pain Point: Difficulty in integrating SharePoint with other enterprise systems and tools, requiring costly customs development and maintenance. Challenges in ensuring data consistency and security across integrated systems.
- OIP Solution: Seamless integration with HRIS, CRM, BI, and other enterprise systems and tools. It simplifies the process of implementing and maintaining integrations, ensuring data consistency and security across integrated systems thanks to the Avokaado innovative new document format aDoc.
- Governance and Compliance
- SharePoint Pain Point: Challenges in ensuring proper governance and compliance with regulations. The complexity of defining and enforcing governance policies for SharePoint content, managing content lifecycle and retention policies as it is built on a Document/file storing framework
- OIP Solution: Built to help organizations ensure proper governance and compliance with regulations like HIPPA, GDPR, ISO, SOC2, etc. It provides tools for defining and enforcing governance policies, managing the content lifecycle, and implementing retention policies effectively.
- User Adoption
- SharePoint Pain Point: Difficulty in providing adequate training and support for users to effectively utilize SharePoint features.
- OIP Solution: Provides comprehensive implementation, training, and support resources to empower users to utilize Avokaado operational intelligence features efficiently and to scale from business function to function.
Common Challenges with Legacy Systems
- Limited Flexibility and Customization:
Older systems often struggle to adapt to new business processes or integrate with modern tools, making it difficult to meet the evolving needs of the organization. This lack of flexibility hampers innovation and the ability to scale effectively. - High Maintenance Costs:
Legacy systems can be costly to maintain and update, draining IT budgets. These systems often require extensive custom development to align with evolving business needs, adding further costs and complexity. - Document-First, Not Data-First Framework:
Outdated platforms are typically built on a Document-First principle, where legal documents take precedence over data. In these legacy systems, contract data isn’t easily accessible, leaving organizations without critical data insights, transparency, efficiency, and connectivity with other information systems. This lack of data focus limits real-time decision-making and operational agility. - Missing Automation Functionalities:
Legacy systems often feature clunky interfaces that hinder productivity and employee satisfaction. They lack modern automation functionalities for workflows, document management, and drafting, leading to manual processes, increased compliance risks, and inefficiencies in managing large-scale operations. - Compliance Requires Additional Manual Processes:
Compliance management in legacy systems typically requires manual processes for extracting and organizing data into Excel spreadsheets. Manual operations increase the risk of inconsistencies and inaccuracies, leading to potential compliance breaches and higher operational costs.
By addressing these challenges with a data-first, automation-driven platform like Avokaado, businesses can significantly improve their operational efficiency, data accessibility, and regulatory compliance.
Step-by-Step Guide to Migrating from a Legacy System
1. Assess Your Current System
Begin by thoroughly assessing your existing system. Identify what’s working and what’s not. Understand the scope of data you have, including documents, workflows, and user permissions. This assessment will help you determine what needs to be migrated and what can be left behind.
How to do that? We suggest assessing different operations or even processes separately. You should assess legal operations, corporate/administrative operations, compliance, people/HR operations, and revenue operations individually or even break them into separate processes for better assessment. Below is an example of the assessment criteria by operation type:
Assessment Criteria by Operation Type
- Legal Operations
- Document Management: Are legal documents organized and easily accessible?
- Workflow Efficiency: How streamlined and scalable are the processes for contract creation, review, and approval?
- Compliance and Risk: Are there any risks associated with current document management practices, templates reviews and circling?
- Automation Needs: What manual tasks could benefit from automation?
- Corporate/Administrative Operations
- Data Organization: How well-organized are corporate records, policies, and procedures?
- Access Control: Are user permissions set appropriately to safeguard sensitive information?
- Workflow Integration: How well do current workflows integrate with other corporate systems?
- System Usability: Are users experiencing any difficulties with the current system?
- Compliance Operations
- Regulatory Compliance: How effectively does the current system support compliance with industry regulations?
- Audit Readiness: Is your data easily accessible and organized for audits?
- Policy Enforcement: How well does the system enforce corporate policies and procedures?
- Data Integrity: Are there concerns about data accuracy or completeness?
- People/HR Operations
- Employee Records Management: How efficiently are employee records managed and accessed?
- Onboarding/Offboarding Processes: Are these processes streamlined and compliant with legal requirements?
- Confidentiality: Is sensitive HR data protected and accessible only to authorized personnel?
- Workflow Automation: What HR processes could benefit from further automation?
- Revenue Operations
- Sales and Contract Management: How effectively does the current system manage sales contracts and related documents?
- Revenue Reporting: Are there any challenges in tracking and reporting revenue accurately?
- Integration with CRM/ERP: How well does the system integrate with CRM and ERP systems for seamless revenue and documents tracking?
- Automation Opportunities: Which revenue-related tasks could be automated to improve efficiency and enable an accurate system of records?
Pro tip: Conduct interviews with key stakeholders in each department to understand their pain points and desired features in the new system.
2. Define Your Migration Goals
Clearly outlining your migration goals is crucial to ensuring a successful transition. By focusing on the outcomes you want to achieve, rather than specific functionalities, you can make more strategic decisions and select the right platform for your needs. Here are some examples of well-defined migration goals:
- Full Transparency with Agreements, Data, and Documents:
“We need to migrate all our customer agreements from a legacy document management system to a data-driven OIP. This will allow us to achieve full transparency across agreements, data, and documents to drive revenue and growth.” - Eliminate Duplicate and False Documents:
“Our legacy system is cluttered with duplicate and false documents, making it impossible to make informed decisions. We need to move to a structured system that’s data-driven, where all information is accurate and easily accessible.” - End-to-End System for Customer Agreements:
“We need to create an end-to-end system for customer agreements that is data-driven, integrated with CRM, and enables efficiency and compliance without costing a six to seven-figure budget.” - Support Growth with Automation and Visibility:
“We need to support company growth through automation and better visibility into workflows and data, ensuring that growth does not introduce compliance risks or hinder operational efficiency.”
Key Reminder:
When defining your goals, focus on the pain points from the user’s or company’s perspective. Avoid prioritizing specific functionalities at the outset. Many modern, innovative platforms are rethinking how work is done. For instance, instead of focusing on a feature like collaborative red-lining, frame the goal as achieving faster document turnaround or closing deals faster—outcomes that will better align with your broader business objectives.
3. Choose the Right Platform
Selecting the right platform for your document management and operational intelligence needs is a critical step towards success. However, many organizations overlook essential aspects like onboarding and support, which can lead to underutilized systems and wasted resources. Here’s what to keep in mind when choosing the right platform:
- Onboarding and Support:
One common pitfall is purchasing a platform without proper onboarding and support packages, only to realize later that it can’t be implemented correctly without additional help. When budgeting for a platform, always allocate funds for onboarding and ongoing support to ensure you get the full value from your migration. Investigate the platform’s Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and thoroughly understand the support provided—particularly in terms of response times and resolution timelines. - Languages and Regional Support:
If your organization operates across multiple countries, ensure that the platform offers language support and the necessary signing solutions for all regions where you operate. For global organizations, this is crucial to avoid compliance or operational inefficiencies. - Integration and Future Expansion:
Consider the platform’s ability to integrate with your existing tools, such as CRM, ERP, or HRIS systems. Also, look into whether the platform can scale with your business as it grows. Opt for a platform that offers customization and scalability so you don’t outgrow it too quickly or find yourself with a system too large and complex for your current needs. - Pricing and Hidden Costs:
Fully understand the pricing structure and any potential cost drivers. Look for clarity on the pricing model and the possibility of price increases over time. Some platforms offer tiered pricing or charge extra for advanced features or additional users, so ensure you get a full picture of the cost landscape. If possible, lock in the price for a longer period by choosing a 3-5 year contract instead of a 1-year agreement. Longer contracts may offer you more leverage to negotiate and avoid sudden price increases while securing a stable budget for the platform. - Avoid Buying a Solution Too Big for Your Needs:
Sometimes organizations purchase a solution that is too complex or feature-rich for their current operations, leading to underutilization. Be sure the platform matches your needs now, while offering flexibility for future growth (modules for advanced features) - Unified Tech Ecosystem:
Most buyers now prefer to see their tech ecosystem as integrated and unified. Look for platforms that can connect and sync data with your other systems, providing a seamless user experience across your operations.
OIP offers a comprehensive solution designed to replace legacy systems like SharePoint, providing an integrated environment for document management, contract automation, and workflow optimization—all within a secure and user-friendly interface with transparent pricing structure. It supports a data-first approach and ensures your documents, data, and workflows are aligned for transparency, compliance, and efficiency.
Key considerations: Look for platforms that offer customization, scalability, and integration with existing tools. Choose onboarding and support packages to ensure the platform can be properly utilized.
4. Plan the Migration Process
Once you’ve selected your platform, it’s crucial to create a detailed migration plan in collaboration with the onboarding team. Adopting a phased approach is often the most effective, as it allows you to test and refine your process before scaling up. Below is an example of a potential migration process that can guide your planning:
Stage 1: Initial Data Test Drives
- What: Test data extraction and data models with 100 customer contracts and related documents (e.g., invoices, acts etc). The goal is to extract data from 100 parties and build a data registry on the OIP platform.
- How: Use AI upload features and data models created for specific document types. The sample data set will include real customer contracts, invoices, acceptance letters, and tax clearance forms.
- Technical How: We will use Avokaado AI along with data and party registries modules. Data models will be prepared to allow easy future integration with public registries for compliance checks.
- Why: The purpose of this stage is to train the AI models, test data accuracy, and refine the approach before full-scale implementation. These data models will form the basis for the larger process in Stage 2.
Stage 2: New Automated Process set up
- What: Develop a new customer creation process and an existing customer data form signing process.
- How: Leverage Avokaado’s aDoc automation modules to design document templates and automate workflows for creating and updating customer data.
- Why: This step is critical for achieving compliance automation and ensuring that all workflows are integrated and efficient. It lays the groundwork for scaling up and reduces manual data entry.
Stage 3: Full Scale Implementation
- What: Scale the KYC process to full implementation by uploading all customer data to the platform.
- How: Use AI upload to incorporate the created data models, parties, and data registries.
- Why: The goal is to have a full list of customers and implement a fully compliant KYC process, ensuring that your organization can efficiently manage customer data and documents while adhering to legal requirements.
Stage 4: Data Connectivity and Integration
- What: Integrate the party registries with commercial registries for data verification and updates. Additionally, integrate Avokaado’s party and data registries with the in-house CRM for continuous synchronization.
- How: In the parties registry, enable data verification for one or multiple clients, receiving updates from commercial or public sources. A data log will track the source and timing of updates, while updated records will automatically be sent to your CRM after transactions or registry checks.
- Why: This stage will create an ongoing monitoring system for customer data, ensuring continuous compliance and up-to-date information for all legal and business operations.
5. Prepare Your Team
Your employees are the end-users of the new system, so their buy-in is crucial for the success of the platform change. A smooth transition depends on how well your team understands and adopts the new tools. Here’s how to prepare your team for the change:
- Training Sessions: organize comprehensive training sessions to walk employees through the platform's functionalities. This should cover how the system works, its key features, and specific use cases relevant to their roles. Pro Tip: collect feedback already in onboarding stage 1 and explain what are the benefits of the system.
- Provide Resources: offer ongoing resources like user guides, video tutorials, and a knowledge base to support employees as they adjust to the new platform.
- Focus on Benefits: clearly communicate how the new platform will benefit their day-to-day tasks. Explain how it will streamline processes, reduce manual work, and enhance productivity. Show how the data-driven system provides them with better insights, automation, and transparency, making their work easier and more efficient.
- Feedback Loop: create a feedback loop where employees can share their experiences, ask questions, and report issues. This will help refine processes and ensure that any challenges are addressed promptly.
Conclusion
Migrating from SharePoint or any legacy system doesn’t have to be a nightmare. With careful planning, the right tools and the right team, and a clear strategy, you can successfully transition to a modern platform like Avokaado’s OIP. By following the steps outlined in this guide, CEOs and IT managers can navigate the migration process confidently and emerge with a more efficient, secure, and user-friendly system.
Ready to make the switch and automate your document and compliance management? Start a free trial of Avokaado today or schedule a live demo with our team to see how we fit into your growth plans?
