First-hand Lessons from $40M Data Migration

Hello Data Leaders,

Today, I am sharing a story that I witnessed first-hand that illustrates why so many large-scale transformation programs stall, burn budget, and ultimately miss their objectives despite the best talent and intentions.

 It wasn’t a good sight but it gave me plenty of ‘insight’ that I am sharing with you.

The $40 M Energy Treasury Migration That Never Really Finished

A global company embarked on a two-year, $40 million project to migrate its legacy treasury system to a modern cloud application. Leadership hand-picked an all-star team- 

• A renowned program leader

• Big 4 and PMO consultants

• An army of data analysts, engineers, and infrastructure experts

• Dozens of pre-sales specialists from the chosen software vendor

Yet, only two Business Analysts, each with 25 years’ institutional knowledge who truly understood the data and its nuances.

If you’ve ever watched a strategic programme stall because “the data isn’t ready yet”, you know the frustration:

• Millions spent on licences, consultants, and PMO overhead

• Timelines slipping quarter after quarter

• Critical knowledge locked in the heads of a few “indispensable” experts

• Business stakeholders losing confidence long before go-live

 I witnessed this first-hand. They assembled an A-team of Big 4 consultants, cloud architects, and vendor specialists yet the initiative ground to a halt.

From Day One, subtle warning signs emerged

• The entire ‘intellectual property’ of the legacy system resided in those two individuals.

• Data mapping and lineage reviews were treated as a checkbox in a wider ‘business process transformation,’ not as a core capability.

• Access to source data and data models was tightly controlled, and available only to a handful of experts.

 Fast forward four years later: despite spending over $40 million, the original program was shelved, the migration re-scoped, and the organization found itself back at square one.

 The lesson? No matter how rich your consulting  or sophisticated your infrastructure roadmap, data access democratization must come first. This transition is not a want but a need.

Putting Data at the Center - Our North Star

At datamanagement.ai we’ve built our entire platform on this principle:

Through a suite of AI agents, we:

• Unlock data in place, with zero-ETL, in hours instead of months

• Automate data-model discovery and lineage capture, surfacing critical schema details to the entire team

• Empower business users to design, validate, and approve mappings through natural-language prompts

This isn’t theory, it's the foundation that prevents the very pitfalls that derailed that $40M migration.

The Opportunity - Tens to Hundreds of Millions Saved Annually

By democratizing data access through our Chain-of-Data paradigm (A fundamentally different way to solve data problems  by building building matrix of interlinked data blocks with natural language) and embedding AI-powered controls, mid-market and enterprise organizations can:

• Shrink transformation timelines from years to months

• Reduce program overruns by automating risk indicators and lineage audits

• Empower internal experts instead of siloing knowledge in two individuals so critical decisions aren’t delayed

 We believe this approach can unlock tens to hundreds of millions in savings each year across industries.

An Invitation to Co-Create the Future

We believe no single vendor can solve the global data-bottleneck alone. That’s why we’re opening a Founding Design Partner programme.

The Joint Opportunity

• Save £ millions in overruns by surfacing mapping, lineage, and quality risks on Day 1

• Level-up your teams: analysts and SMEs become prompt-driven “data co-pilots,” not ticket submitters

• Shape an open standard for natural language based agentic data workflows (using Chain-of-Data) that will benefit the entire industry

Ready to Collaborate?

1. Reply to this email with a brief note about your current data challenge.

2. Book a 30-minute discovery call. We’ll determine fit and outline next steps.

3. Kick-off workshop. Within two weeks you’ll have agents running against a non-prod dataset - seeing results, not slide-ware.

Join Our Beta - Be the Change Agent

We’re now inviting a small group of forward-thinking organizations to join our beta program. You’ll get:

• Early access to our Chain-of-Data canvas and AI agents

• Dedicated onboarding support to configure your data sources

• Influence over our product roadmap to address your unique challenges

 If you’re ready to put data access democratization at the center of your next transformation, reply to this email or visit:

Let’s ensure your next $ million-plus initiative doesn’t falter - because the right data, in the right hands, makes all the difference.

Warms regards,

Shen Pandi & DataManagement.AI team