As many organizations find out the hard way, changing HR and payroll platforms is more than a simple systems upgrade. In practice, data migration is far more consequential. It’s a business continuity exercise with legal, operational, and reputational implications that extend well beyond go live, shaping everything from compliance posture to employee trust if it’s mishandled.
At Calibrate HCM, an HR technology services firm specializing in complex data migration and workforce systems transformation, Tony Buffolino helps organizations manage system transitions with precision and reliability. His work is guided by the belief that historical HR data is regulated, litigatable, and operationally relevant, and therefore demands the same rigor as live payroll data.
“I sum up quality data migration in four words: secure, accurate, fast, and integrated,” says Buffolino, Chief Operations Officer at Calibrate HCM. After more than a decade leading HR technology strategy, global operations, and scalable service delivery models, those four principles have become the lens through which he evaluates every migration decision.
HR data migration carries more risk than most realize
HR data migration is a high-stakes business risk, with additional risk added into the mix by the fact that many of these major system moves are carried out under tight timelines. Buffolino recalls a recent client that had just two weeks to exit its existing HCM and payroll system before access was cut off. The company was preparing for year-end performance reviews, yet key historical records were still locked in the departing platform.
The scale surprised even seasoned HR leaders. More than 3,000 active employee records and over 10,000 total employee records, with upwards of four million documents needed to be extracted, validated, and rehomed. Pay stubs, year-end forms, job and pay changes, personnel files, performance reviews and more, all had to land in the new system under the correct employee profiles, with the right manager access, before review season began.
“Without security, accuracy, speed, and integration built into your DNA, you wouldn’t be able to deliver on a project of that size, that fast,” Buffolino says. The example illustrates a broader problem. HR data migrations are often treated as a technical afterthought, even though failure exposes organizations to compliance breaches and operational paralysis.
The compliance blind spots that derail migrations
One reason migrations unravel is a lack of clarity around retention requirements. Payroll records must be retained for years. Time cards, personnel files, I-9s, and applicant data all come with statutory minimums, many of which extend further at the state level. “It’s crucial because it’s a legal requirement,” Buffolino says. “And those timeline minimums are often not understood at best, and an afterthought at worst.”
During implementation, attention is pulled toward getting current payroll running. Payroll and HR technology vendors focus on what’s needed to process the next pay run or onboard new hires. Historical data fades into the background for many businesses until the realization hits that access to the old system is about to disappear, creating a sense of panic.
The second blind spot is volume. Organizations underestimate how much data accumulates over years of daily HR activity. When Calibrate HCM informed one client that their migration involved more than four million documents, the reaction was disbelief. “They don’t think about how many individual documents flow into the system on a daily basis,” Buffolino says. “When you’re on these platforms for five, six, or seven years, that volume really adds up.” For his team, that volume was fairly unremarkable. Document sprawl is the norm.
Building a migration strategy that reduces stress
Calibrate HCM’s guidance focuses on preparation, shifting migration into a structured risk management exercise.
First, organizations need to reacquaint themselves with their regulatory exposure. Understanding what’s triggered audits or litigation in the past helps prioritize which records are non-negotiable. Second, teams must map how their current system is actually used. HCM platforms are flexible, and data can live in unexpected places depending on configuration choices made years earlier.
The final step is resisting the temptation to self-migrate or go with a solution provided by the departing HCM/Payroll vendor. What looks like a manageable export for the HR Team quickly becomes unworkable at scale. Meanwhile the overpriced options presented by HCM and Payroll vendors, are “Nothing more than a money grab as you leave their platform, where all you receive in return is an unusable data-dump of intermingled information,” said Buffolino.
Automation is reshaping HR data movement
Looking ahead, Buffolino sees artificial intelligence changing how migrations are designed and executed. While much of the market still relies on manual processing or outdated extraction tools that park data in costly holding platforms, Calibrate HCM takes a different view.
“Your historical data belongs right next to your current data,” Buffolino says. “It shouldn’t live in an adjunct system.” AI is used to define functional and technical requirements, generate custom integration code, reconcile large data sets, surface error cases, and standardize formats at speed. The goal is reducing human error while increasing transparency and usability of the data as it moves to a new platform.
Getting migration right matters long after go-live
When historical data is accessible, auditable, and integrated, organizations are better positioned to defend claims, analyze workforce trends, and maintain trust with employees. Poor migrations, by contrast, create long-term risk that can surface years later during disputes or regulatory reviews. “This isn’t just about moving files,” Buffolino says. “It’s about protecting the business years down the line, when you least expect that data to be needed.”
That perspective shapes how success is defined at Calibrate HCM. Migration isn’t measured by how quickly a new system launches, but by whether the organization retains control of its workforce history when it matters most.
Follow Tony Buffolino on LinkedIn or visit his website.
