A CRM migration can freeze a Microsoft partnership for a year. Theirs didn't lose a day.

A thousand live deals, riding on a system about to go dark.

Swapping the system your whole sales team runs on is one of the riskiest things you can do to a Microsoft partnership. When deals stop syncing, Microsoft sellers lose sight of them, closes stall, and a partnership can freeze for six to twelve months. This company did exactly that mid-year: one sales system out, another in, with up to 1,000 open joint deals, roughly $500M, caught in the handover. Microsoft and the company work those deals off one shared list in Partner Center, and we keep that list accurate with reports pulled straight from the sales system about to be switched off. Any deal that failed to make the jump would simply vanish from the sellers working it.

We kept the old system running until every deal was safely inside the new one.

1. Kept exporting from the old system until the hour it shut off. Reports came out on schedule right up to the day it was turned off, so there was never a stretch of time without a current picture of the pipeline.
2. Rebuilt the reports in the new system before the switch. We got access while the old system still ran, then rebuilt every report we rely on with the client's system owner. They worked from day one.
3. Left every deal open in Partner Center on purpose. Deals are normally closed out as they finish. We left them open, so Partner Center held a full copy of the pipeline the switch could not touch.
4. Matched the records one by one, then cleared the leftovers. Every deal carried an ID we could trace across all three systems. We checked for duplicates and gaps, then closed out 750 finished deals.