Qumas Process Compliance to TrackWise

Overview

The client is a multi-specialty health care company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing innovative pharmaceuticals, biologics, medical devices and over-the-counter consumer products.

Objective

After completing a corporate acquisition, this client sought to migrate the information systems to corporate IT standards. As part of this effort, the company needed to migrate data from a legacy QUMAS Process Compliance platform to Sparta Systems’ TrackWise. Though the client was familiar with the target application from a user’s perspective, it did not know how to access and transform the data currently residing in the legacy system. The quality of the data was critical, and given their lack of experience in complex migrations, the client did not want to risk managing the project without the right skill sets in place.

Migration Challenges

In addition to the challenges that were understood at the outset, the client also faced very limited resources to both implement and support the migration. Upon further examination by the client team, the project blueprint revealed further complexities and resource requirements. Another challenge involved the vast differences between the source and target systems. Because the two distinct platforms – QUMAS and TrackWise – maintain very different data structures, the mapping was quite complex. For example, the content in the legacy system was stored in BLOB format on an Oracle database, requiring that the data be extracted and rendered to file system format before being imported into the TrackWise target system.

Because of the complex mappings, the typical manual sampling approach to migration testing was expected to be costly, time-consuming and would require the attention of internal resources that simply did not have the time required for adequate testing. As a result, the company was in desperate need of a migration process that combined critical elements: cost efficiency, timeliness and automated testing and validation assurances.

Valiance Solution

Faced with this complex undertaking, the healthcare company knew that it would need a team of experienced resources to guide the migration project to successful completion. After careful consideration, the client selected migration industry veteran Valiance to lead its efforts.

Through its experience in hundreds of migrations for companies in regulated industries, Valiance sprang into action, setting strategy for not only the migration approach but also deploying its TRUmigrate software technology and resources to plan and execute the migration from start to finish. The company was able to work independently, with minimal client participation, fueled by its deep experience with both the source and target systems.

Valiance was also able to adapt its approach during critical phases of the migration, keeping the project on track and timely as directed by the client. For example, despite the continuous discovery of mapping complexities as the project evolved, Valiance was able to use the flexibility inherent in TRUmigrate to sidestep potential setbacks and efficiently implement the required configurations. And although the mapping complexities were more significant than originally anticipated, the combination of configurable migration software and 100% testing with Valiance’s TRUcompare software provided the highest level of assurance that all data was successfully transitioned to the new system (versus traditional sampling approaches).

Results

With Valiance as a strategic intelligence and technology partner for this endeavor, the migration was a success. Valiance was able to extract the content and data efficiently and map to the target system, with no need for the client to play an active role in the testing process. Although additional mapping complexities were uncovered, previous expertise prevailed and the overall engagement remained on track and within budget: a direct result of Valiance’s experience, technical acumen, and the power behind its TRUmigrate and TRUcompare migration solutions.