How To Avoid The Common Headaches In Software Migration

InnovationHow To Avoid The Common Headaches In Software MigrationByThomas Berndorfer,Forbes Councils Member.for Forbes Technology CouncilCOUNCIL POSTExpertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based)May 15, 2026, 07:30am EDTThomas Berndorfer is the CEO of Connecting Software. getty​IT professionals often dread the task of migrating software—an undertaking that can require months, if not years, of work and the difficult job of gaining cultural buy-in from staff. Migrations like these happen for many reasons—new apps and systems might have a better business case because of technological edge or cost, alternatively, a merger or acquisition might mean that new staff have to be brought into alignment with the broader company. Misaligned systems can immediately cause problems between processes, departments and new acquisitions. When one side uses Microsoft and another uses Google, files might be saved in different formats and useful functions might not exist on a colleague’s machine. These small inconveniences can cumulatively lead to inefficiencies and breakdowns in collaboration. It’s easy to see why companies would therefore want to migrate their systems to have greater alignment, but that is certainly easier said than done in many cases. Recent surveys show that companies with 750-1499 employees use about 116 different SaaS apps, with complex layers of interdependencies that make change difficult and frustrating. This is especially true when companies try to integrate SaaS apps with on-prem systems (about 25% of apps) or integrate across departments within large companies, which often have subtly different yet distinct setups. These webs of interdependency can lead to unexpected consequences when one program is changed—if a company were to change its backend website technology, for instance, it might find that the data it provides to its sales pipeline is no longer compatible. Famously,...