Moving your data into Zoho CRM, a checklist
Clean, map and import your records in the right order, so Contacts land on the right Accounts and nothing is lost on the way in.
Getting your data into Zoho CRM is usually the first real milestone of a new setup. Zoho's import tool reads spreadsheets and CSV files, and its migration tools can pull from several other CRMs directly. The tool is the easy part. The preparation decides whether your team trusts the data on day one.
1. Export everything, then decide what to bring
Export all of it from the old system, including notes, activities and attachments if you'll need them. Then decide what's worth importing. Leads untouched for five years and contacts with no email or phone rarely earn a place in the new CRM.
2. Clean before you import
Fixing data in a spreadsheet is far quicker than fixing it record by record in a CRM.
- Remove duplicates, especially companies spelled several ways.
- Split full names into first and last name.
- Make country, state and industry values consistent.
- Format phone numbers and dates the same way throughout.
3. Set up fields first
Create every custom field and pick-list value before importing, so each column has somewhere to go. Pick-list values in the file must match the values in Zoho exactly, or the import will skip or blank them.
4. Import in the right order
Records that others point to go first:
- Accounts
- Contacts, matched to their Account by name
- Deals, matched to Accounts and Contacts
- Activities and notes, matched to the records above
Lookups only connect when the parent record already exists.
5. Test with a small batch
Import twenty records, open a few, and check every field, owner and link. Fix the mapping, delete the test batch, then run the full import. Zoho keeps an import history, so a bad batch can be undone.
6. Check the result with the people who use it
Ask a salesperson to look up three customers they know well. If those look right, the rest probably do too.
We can do it for you
Data migration is part of every implementation we do, from a single spreadsheet to a full move from another CRM. Send us what you have and we'll tell you what it takes.