How painful is switching CRM systems and how do I plan for it?

CRM migrations are painful primarily because of data cleanup, not the technical migration itself. Before migrating: audit and clean your contact data (remove duplicates, fill missing fields), document your current workflows and pipeline stages, map old fields to new fields, and run parallel systems for 2–4 weeks. Plan for 1–3 months of reduced team productivity during the transition. The bigger your dataset and team, the longer and harder the migration.