Many organizations find themselves in a Consent and Preference Management (CPM) platform conundrum.
Nearly a decade ago, there was an urgent requirement to implement a solution to data privacy: GDPR.
Cookie consent banners popped up across the internet, and brands had to be (more) careful with how they handled data.
From there on out, technology and platforms have evolved.
So now, brands are re-evaluating what they need their consent technology to achieve.
Current (or legacy) platforms are causing friction, whether because the technology itself is outdated or because the pricing, customer support, integration, updates, or other factors are no longer a good fit. Learn more about why now is the time to move from legacy providers.
However, businesses have invested time and money in implementation, user training, customization, and adoption.
Which means switching to a different provider can feel daunting.
In this article, we’re walking through our experiences when it comes to CMP migration projects and some learnings that might help you prepare for the transition. Because as painful as it might seem at first, it’s worth it in the long run to implement a consent management platform that delivers both compliance and customer experience, without compromising agility, scalability, or trust.
Key takeaways:
- Legacy CMPs are causing friction: Outdated tech, poor support, or pricing misalignment are prompting brands to reassess.
- Migration feels daunting but is doable: With the right plan, switching platforms can be smooth and worthwhile.
- Data migration is the biggest hurdle: Maintaining consent records is essential for compliance and continuity.
- Plan early, migrate smart: Start well before contract renewal to avoid being stuck with a poor-fit vendor.
- Expect challenges, prepare for success: Risk mitigation, testing, and backups are key to a successful transition.
Jump to…
- The big challenge: Data migration
- 1. Analyze and create a migration plan
- 2. Consent and Preference Management: From checkbox to strategic platform
- 3. Conduct data assurance activities
- Final thoughts
The big challenge: Data migration
When it comes to renewing or going out to tender… The natural human tendency is to shy away from the effort of choosing a new solution. But ironically, the longer you resist the decision, the more entrenched the company becomes in the poor-fit solution.
In some ways, the longer a company stays in the legacy situation, the more daunting the leap to migrating to a better one can seem.
One of the most challenging aspects of changing CMP solutions is that of data migration. After all, according to Gartner, 83% of migration projects either fail or exceed budget and implementation schedules.
Though consent management is not a set-and-forget solution, there is also no doubt that maintaining legacy audit trails about who gave what consents, when, and under what circumstances is absolutely required to move forward with another vendor. This information is essential for compliance with record keeping requirements, internal reporting, and business analytics, and, of course, operationalizing those legacy consents into the future.
Therefore, when switching consent management platforms, a company must have a sound plan for migrating legacy data and for maintaining and continuing to use this legacy consent data in the new platform.
Fortunately, there are three key steps that a company can follow to help ensure a practical, compliant, and efficient CMP migration.
1. Analyze and create a migration plan
As one source describes, a company contemplating a platform migration must carefully review the source and target systems as well as the data involved and required by both.
Generally conducted by a cross-functional team, this analysis should provide the team with a deep understanding of:
- How each system works
- How the data within each system is structured
From there, the team can identify any areas that may present problems and offer solutions to handling those problems. Once the team has aligned solutions to potential problems, the team can create and implement a thoughtful migration plan.
The vendors involved may also be able to help. In our case, we know our own platform inside and out, as well as having extensive experience in migrating clients from other platforms. We work with our clients on a case-by-case basis to understand their existing architecture beyond just consent and create detailed migration plans to make sure the transition is as seamless as possible.
It goes without saying that smooth migrations require careful planning. Successful companies treat migrations as projects rather than as afterthoughts. Whether a company starts with a vendor-provided migration plan or creates one on its own, the company will want to follow that detailed plan – complete with milestones and dependencies – with all the rigor of any technology project.
An important part of the migration plan is a sunset target. This means that a sound migration plan will define which platforms or tools the company will sunset, when those sunset dates will occur, and a plan for mitigating stakeholder impacts during and after the sunset dates. The sunset portion of the migration plan may include communication plans with stakeholders, training efforts, and user support plans.
Important note…
You need to consider your migration plans well in advance of vendor contract renewal. Whilst some migrations can happen overnight, others can take longer depending on the complexity of the data being migrated. Don’t get caught having to renew a vendor you categorically do not want to work with.
2. Conduct data assurance activities
A family moving from one house to another will sort through belongings, throw out unusable items, clean belongings that will make the move, and organize possessions into boxes.
Similarly, a company considering a CPM platform migration will review data, cleanse its data sets, destroy unusable data, and organize data to facilitate its movement from one platform to another.
One source suggests that these data assurance activities will include several phases: data profiling, data quality definition, and data cleansing. All these activities should include a comprehensive analysis of both upstream and downstream impacts to changes in data.
Again, your chosen vendor can assist with documentation and in-depth knowledge of platform requirements. Syrenis has carried out this process many times and can provide helpful analysis and data assurance activities as per previous successes.
3. Expect the best, be prepared for the worst
Even the best-planned migrations represent some risk, so a company preparing to migrate such critical data as consent information will want to mitigate the risk.
This will certainly mean preparing a data backup before starting the migration process and being prepared to roll back to the source system in case anything goes wrong.
Other risk mitigation steps include testing migration tools before implementing them, migrating according to a rolling schedule (starting with smaller or less complex data sets first), and conducting final checks on the migration once it completes to help ensure that the process was a complete success.
Regardless of the exact risk mitigation strategy appropriate for a company’s CPM platform migration efforts, it will be useful for the company to take an “expect the best but be prepared for the worst” approach and verify accuracy and effectiveness of each critical step in the process.
Final thoughts…
Though migrating from one CPM platform to another can seem a challenging task, good planning will help any company manage the process successfully. The new CPM platform can help the company mobilize around key issues and may even have a basis migration plan from well-known competitors to its platform from which the company can base its own planning.
Additionally, attention to data hygiene and related data questions from an end-to-end perspective will help prevent data problems during migration.
Finally, creating a Plan B for each step and testing along the way will help ensure that the company can identify and correct minor glitches before they become large problems.
