Manual Data Entry

This is often seen as a cheap, risk free option when migrating data between systems. The perception is that an operator can quickly and easily apply required changes with no expensive software, no development programmers and no endless testing loops.

But for anything other than the smallest data migration, this is probably the slowest, most expensive way of transferring data from one platform to another. And the least accurate.

The only way to avoid human error is to constantly check and recheck and even then it is almost certain that a significant number of errors will go undetected. The quality of the data in the new system will be questionable, leading to operational delays and failures.

In fact, unless the volume of data being transferred is very small this is simply the worst possible way to migrate data.