Three CRMs consolidated into one, with the history intact

Three regional sales teams on three different CRMs merged onto one platform, with stage history preserved so year-on-year forecasting kept working.

Wholesale & Distribution · National distribution group

CRM Integrations

1
CRM platform, down from 3: removed
Manual forecast consolidation: ~18%
Duplicate accounts merged at load

The challenge

Growth by acquisition had left three regional sales teams on three CRMs with three definitions of a qualified lead. Consolidated forecasting was rebuilt by hand in a spreadsheet each month, and nobody could say with confidence what total open pipeline was.

What we did

We ran a selection against the three incumbents rather than assuming the largest team's platform should win, then migrated all three into it. Stage transition history and activity timelines migrated alongside contacts and deals, so historical comparison survived. Duplicate accounts were merged during load against rules agreed with sales operations, not left as a cleanup project. Pipeline value and closed-won totals were reconciled against each source system before any team switched over, and the CRM was wired two-way to the ERP so credit position and order history are visible inside the deal.

The technically interesting part of this project was not the data movement. It was reconciliation: proving that open pipeline and closed-won totals in the new system matched the reports leadership already trusted, before anyone was asked to stop using the old ones.

Two of the three discrepancies we found turned out to be definition differences rather than lost records — one region had been counting a deal as won at purchase order, the other at invoice. Finding that during migration was considerably cheaper than finding it during a board meeting.