Sanofi: Six systems migrated into one Salesforce org

Context

Sanofi's data sat in six systems, and the target was one Salesforce org.

Six systems means six data models for records that have to end up as one.

In a migration, loading the data is the easy part. The hard part is proving that what arrived matches what left, before anyone switches a source off.

Role

Sanofi was a Cognizant client. I worked on the migration on the Cognizant delivery side, from 2021 to 2022.

What happened

Each of the six systems had its own mapping to the target model, written and agreed before any load.

Every load ended with a reconciliation: source and target compared, and every gap logged as an exception with someone to resolve it. Nothing was accepted while an exception was open.

Reusable templates kept the six migrations consistent, so an error found in one was looked for in the others.

Outcome

Six systems moved into one Salesforce org. The detailed figures stay with the client.

What I teach from it

Data management in ADX201 and ADX211: the Data Import Wizard, Data Loader, duplicate rules, and External IDs, so that a second load updates records instead of duplicating them.

The exercise starts with an import that fails on purpose. Learners read the error file, fix the mapping, and check the counts before they call it done.