January 28, 2015
If you're looking for a new association management software (AMS) system, the time will come to give your prospective vendors the data so they can quote the price for your data migration. Ideally a backup of your database is what would be best so that the vendor can know the number of tables, the table structures, and the row counts of your data. This will help give an accurate quote.
Your vendor can easily accept a SQL Server backup, MYSQL backup, or MS Access Databases. If those are not available they can also accept MS Excel spreadsheets, CSV files, or delimited text files. In order to be prepared to bring data into the new system, you should be able to answer a few questions about your data. Keep in mind: terminology between systems may not be the same, so understanding what fields represent is very important as well.
For more information, read more on the best practices for upgrading your AMS.