We’re only a week away from the Startup Alley pitch competition that’s the opening night time occasion of ABA TECHSHOW, and I not too long ago had the chance to meet up with final yr’s winner, Tony Valenti, founder and CEO of Universal Migrator, who informed me that, since Startup Alley, “it’s been an excellent yr.”
“It positively brings a whole lot of visibility,” Valenti stated. “I believe Startup Alley was a fantastic profit, and I believe successful was a fantastic profit.”
The truth is, Valenti’s firm has gone from startup competitor final yr to diamond sponsor this yr, the very best stage of TECHSHOW sponsorship.
On condition that I set up and reasonable Startup Alley, that is music to my ears. However I’m not so naive as to consider that successful Startup Alley, alone, can result in success. You want a product that solves an issue and does it properly.
Facilitating Knowledge Migrations
The issue Common Migrator solves is information migration for legislation corporations and authorized organizations — most frequently from one legislation apply administration platform to a different or one doc administration system to a different. It allows migrations from greater than 100 sources, with new ones added virtually each week.
“Knowledge migrations in authorized tech have historically actually sucked,” Valenti stated. “The issue with information migrations, typically talking, is that lots of people historically have tried to make use of CSV recordsdata to maneuver information round. That simply doesn’t work the way in which that Common Migrator strikes information.
“We make it very easy to drag information out of various programs after which push it into totally different programs, so tasks that historically would have taken a human perhaps seven or 14 days to do at the moment are like two-hour tasks.”
To be clear, that two hours is human time — the time it takes to arrange and configure the migration. The precise time required emigrate all of a agency’s information varies relying on the agency and its programs, however averages 24 hours.
Even then, Common Migrator strikes current information and paperwork first, so a agency can start working in its new system whilst older information continues to be being migrated, Valenti says.
In search of System Alignment
One motive Common Migrator has seen a lot development over the previous yr, Valenti believes, is that corporations are extra steadily altering apply administration platforms to seek out one which finest aligns with their enterprise and areas of legislation.
Amongst apply administration programs, there is no such thing as a actual “secret sauce” that distinguishes them, he says.
“When you take a look at just about all the apply administration programs, they’re all promoting the identical ketchup,” he says. “A few of them have ketchup produced from pure tomatoes, some from hothouse tomatoes, but it surely’s all the identical ketchup.”
However what does differ is the platform and the person interface. “So that you may need a agency that’s utilizing model primary they usually discover that model quantity two higher aligns with their enterprise and the realm of legislation that they apply.”
When that occurs, he says, “Common Migrator makes what was a really laborious, time-consuming and dangerous strategy of migrating from one platform to a different so much faster and so much much less dangerous.”
When Common Migrator competed in Startup Alley final yr, it may pull information from 65 sources. It’s now at over 100 and persevering with so as to add extra based mostly on buyer requests. The corporate helps over 200 information migrations a month, Valenti says.
Carried out by Consultants
Whereas Common Migrator has facilitated migrations for legislation corporations and authorized organizations from small to giant, the first channel for it to promote its merchandise isn’t on to legislation corporations, however by the authorized know-how consultants and IT consulting corporations that work immediately with legislation corporations to maneuver them to new programs.
“Quite a lot of legislation corporations come on to us, however we wish to be a channel enterprise,” Valenti says. “We wish to be supporting everyone else’s tasks and having extra tasks go to our companions.”
The corporate additionally has relationships immediately with some apply administration firms whose inner migration departments use Common Migrator to facilitate migrations into their platforms, Valenti informed me.
One factor Common Migrator doesn’t do is make suggestions about apply administration or doc administration platforms.
“Typically legislation corporations will ask us, ‘Who do you advocate?’ And I inform them, ‘We don’t advocate anyone, we advocate that you simply do your personal analysis and also you decide the corporate that finest aligns with the place you wish to go after which we’ll take you there.”
Whereas Common Migrator won’t advocate platforms, it does attempt to present unbiased info on precisely what information will be migrated between platforms. Salespeople for apply administration firms might not at all times be properly knowledgeable or as much as information on what information will be migrated from one platform to a different, however Common Migrator can present this info, Valenti says.
The truth is, for a lot of merchandise, its web site lists what information will be migrated and which platforms it may well migrate that information into.
Valenti additionally urges legislation corporations to be cautious about signing up-front, long-term offers with apply administration firms.
“Whoever you’re signing up with, go month to month till you’re on their platform, utilizing their platform, and you like their platform. As soon as you like their platform, then have the dialog about shifting to a yearly or tri-annual contract.
“However don’t do it up entrance — don’t get married till you’ve been on just a few good dates.”