Prepare your data

Inventory the sources

List the systems that currently hold deals, contacts, active loans, documents, tasks, capital sources, credit criteria, and reporting data. Name one source of truth and one business owner for each record type.

Include systems your team relies on informally, such as shared spreadsheets or personal trackers. Hidden sources cause more launch problems than unusual file formats.

Start with representative samples

Provide small, representative exports before the main handoff. Include clean records, incomplete records, duplicates, and the exceptions your team handles manually today.

Samples help the implementation team agree on:

• Field names, data types, and required transformations.
• Which identifiers can match the same borrower, contact, property, or loan.
• How missing values and conflicting sources should be handled.
• Which historical records belong in the initial workspace.
• Which documents and templates need to be associated with each record.

Use the secure transfer method supplied by your implementation lead. Remove unnecessary borrower information from early samples whenever possible.

Approve the migration rules

Before the production load, document:

• The historical cutoff date and final source-system freeze, if any.
• Duplicate and merge rules.
• Required fields and accepted exceptions.
• Status and stage mappings.
• Owners for rejected rows and ambiguous matches.
• The rollback or correction procedure.

Reconcile the result

The customer data owner should compare source and Bridgewerks counts for every loaded record type. Review key financial totals, a sample from every status, linked documents, and all rejected or changed records.

Do not approve the migration solely because the import completed. Go live only after the customer owner signs off on the reconciliation and the remaining exceptions have named owners.