Planning Your Customer Data Migration: A Step-by-Step CDP Guide
Last updated February 20, 2025Not all customer data platforms (CDPs) are created equal, and many companies find themselves outgrowing their current solution. Whether it’s limited scalability, rigid interoperability, or persistent data silos between batch and real-time data, a CDP that can’t keep pace with business growth becomes a bottleneck. It’s no surprise that CDPs are one of the most frequently replaced martech solutions— 21% of companies switched CDPs/DMPs in 2024 alone.
For example, for one global beauty brand, Adobe’s rigid data model lacked the flexibility needed to support new use cases, manage the complexity of multiple brands, and adapt to the acquisition of new brands.* However, Treasure Data provided the scalability and adaptability the company needed—without disrupting operations.
If your business is also considering a CDP alternative, you may be wondering: How complex is the migration process? While switching CDPs is a significant undertaking, the process is faster and more straightforward than you think. Treasure Data has helped over 50 companies successfully transition to a more powerful platform to fuel faster campaign launches, drive more revenue, and scale data processing. For a limited time, you can swap and save with our CDP Trade-Up program.
This blog breaks down the key steps and best practices for a smooth CDP migration, so your business can make the leap with confidence.
Stages of a successful customer data migration
Once you’ve identified your next CDP and committed to a new platform, it’s time to migrate. Treasure Data follows a multi-step process to ensure a smooth transition with minimal disruption. Our proven approach to customer data migration is designed to help businesses migrate efficiently while maintaining data integrity and system functionality.
1. Business discovery
The first step in any customer data migration is understanding the business’s goals and challenges. This stage involves:
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Assessing pain points: Identifying where the current CDP falls short—such as scalability issues, poor integrations, persistent data silos, or a lack of transparency into platform functionality and data unification (aka feeling like your current CDP is a “black box”).
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Defining objectives: Establishing clear goals for the new CDP, such as unifying customer data, improving segmentation, or enabling real-time personalization.
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Running multiple CDPs in parallel: For some businesses, running their existing CDP alongside Treasure Data during the transition helps validate workflows and minimize disruption.
2. Technical discovery
This stage focuses on evaluating the technical infrastructure and integration points to ensure a smooth migration:
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Mapping existing data architecture: Understanding the structure of current data sources and workflows.
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Evaluating integration points: Identifying how Treasure Data CDP will connect with existing marketing, sales, and analytics tools.
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Planning for transition: Ensuring that the legacy CDP is phased out efficiently without causing downtime or data loss.
3. Migration execution: Development and deployment
The core of the customer data migration process involves:
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Data transfer: Moving data from your source systems through Treasure Data’s hundreds of connector options while ensuring accuracy and completeness. The existing CDP can be used as a check-and-balance tool and point of comparison.
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Workflow setup: Rebuilding automations, audience segments, and data flows within the new CDP.
- Validation and testing: Running extensive quality assurance (QA) tests to confirm data integrity, platform functionality, compliance, and integration performance.
Treasure Data’s migration specialists follow a structured, proven methodology to minimize risks and ensure a seamless migration experience.
4. Training and onboarding
Once the migration is complete, the focus shifts to empowering teams to maximize the new platform’s capabilities:
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Team training: Hands-on guidance for marketing, IT, and data teams to optimize their use of the CDP. This typically includes in-person learning delivered by a Treasure Data instructor designed to educate both business and technical users.
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Post-migration support: Ongoing assistance to address any issues and ensure adoption success. In addition, every Treasure Data customer gets a customer success manager and round-the-clock customer support.
Treasure Data ensures that both technical and business users feel confident navigating the platform so organizations can quickly realize the full benefits of their new CDP.
Key roles involved in a successful customer data migration
Moving to a CDP alternative relies on close collaboration between Treasure Data’s team, the customer’s stakeholders, and implementation partners. Each role plays a critical part in ensuring a smooth transition and successful adoption.
Implementation team
Customers can work with their preferred Treasure Data services partners or our in-house team. Treasure Data typically staffs the following roles on a migration project, though the exact team may vary depending on the implementation partner:
- Migration specialists – Lead the technical execution, ensuring accurate data transfer and seamless workflow rebuilding.
- Engagement managers – Coordinate the project, align migration goals with business objectives, and address concerns.
- Support teams – Provide post-migration assistance, troubleshooting, and guidance for smooth adoption.
- Functional analysts – Focus on driving business value, assembling parent segments, training business and governance stakeholders, and ensuring teams are equipped to maximize the CDP.
Customer team
A successful migration requires a cross-functional effort from the customer’s organization to ensure both technical and business success.
Project leadership and champions
Ensure a senior leader (usually VP-level or above) is ultimately accountable for the project and the final decision-maker, ensuring the migration can proceed rapidly. This person ensures executive buy-in and alignment with broader business goals.
IT and data stakeholders
This team may consist of a few different roles, including:
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Product owner – The day-to-day person responsible for managing the CDP, defining use cases, and ensuring the platform delivers business value.
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Technical project manager – Interfaces with Treasure Data’s engagement manager (or the implementation partner), ensuring smooth coordination and execution.
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Security & compliance teams – Engage early in the project to ensure the migration adheres to data privacy regulations, security best practices, and internal compliance policies.
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Data analysts – Responsible for validating data quality, ensuring insights are accurately configured, and optimizing data flows within the CDP to support accurate reporting and decision-making.
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Solution architects – Design scalable data structures and integrations that enable seamless connectivity between systems and ensure the CDP can support long-term business needs. Together with data analysts, these roles ensure that customer data is both actionable and future-proof, maximizing the value of the platform.
Marketing and data activation teams
Marketing leaders ensure the CDP aligns with business objectives and drives key marketing initiatives. They work closely with teams responsible for data activation, including CRM, paid media, personalization, and customer engagement strategies, to ensure the platform effectively supports their efforts.
By aligning IT, security, marketing, and business leaders from the start, organizations can proactively address risks, accelerate adoption, and maximize ROI. Treasure Data ensures that all stakeholders remain aligned throughout the migration process, minimizing disruptions and paving the way for long-term success.
Best practices: Replacing your CDP
Migrating to an alternative CDP requires a well-structured approach to avoid disruptions and ensure long-term success. By following these best practices, your business can streamline the process and maximize the value of your migration to Treasure Data.
Plan ahead
A successful customer data migration starts with careful planning. Clearly communicate the benefits of the migration to internal stakeholders, set realistic timelines, and assign key roles early to ensure a smooth transition.
Security and compliance teams should be involved from the outset to address data privacy requirements, secure necessary permissions for accessing personally identifiable information (PII), and streamline single sign-on (SSO) integration to avoid delays. Even with careful planning, don’t be surprised if an unexpected challenge or two arises when replacing your CDP.
Prioritize business value
Start by focusing on high-impact use cases that will demonstrate immediate value. Treasure Data’s team will work in tandem to identify the most critical data sets and workflows that will drive better customer insights and business outcomes, then scale the migration in phases to minimize risk.
Ensure data integrity
Many organizations assume their data is well-organized, but an existing CDP doesn’t guarantee clean or structured data. Before migrating, take a moment to review your data to understand what data exists, where it resides, and how it is structured. This includes:
- Thinking through both data ingestion (imports) and activation (exports) to ensure the new CDP supports all necessary integrations.
- Centralizing profile-based attribute requirements to ensure a unified customer view.
- Evaluating the volume of data to migrate—businesses often underestimate how much needs to be transferred.
Treasure Data’s team helps businesses assess and optimize their data before migration, ensuring a clean and well-structured transition.
Engage cross-functional teams
Migration success depends on collaboration across IT, marketing, security, and compliance teams. While marketing and data teams ensure that customer insights, CRM data, and personalization strategies are preserved, IT and security teams play a critical role in ensuring data governance, SSO configuration, and compliance with internal security policies. Engaging these teams early helps mitigate risks and avoid last-minute roadblocks.
Make your customer data migration a strategic win
Migrating to a new customer data platform is more than just a technical shift—it’s an opportunity to get greater value from your customer data and position your business for long-term success. While the process may seem complex, a well-structured migration strategy, cross-functional collaboration, and the right partner can turn it into a seamless transition.
With over 50 successful customer data migrations, Treasure Data has the expertise to help businesses move beyond the limitations of legacy CDPs while ensuring data integrity, minimal disruption, and faster time-to-value. Whether you need to streamline integrations, unify customer profiles, or scale personalization efforts, Treasure Data provides the flexibility and support needed to achieve your business goals.
* Based on real feedback from customers we’ve successfully migrated (anonymized).
