Salesforce to Slate in 10 months

Salesforce was fine as a general application system. The problem was the people using it. Staff and professors had to handle approvals, deciding who reviews what and who doesn't, and the system wasn't designed around that at all. It was extremely difficult for them. Slate is built specifically for education application systems.

When I moved from web development to enrollment systems, this was the thing they needed: something that catered directly to students and directly to every approver. Staff, professors, grad school, scholarships, all under enrollment. The shift happened for two reasons. Enrollment wanted their own in-house system they had full control over, and they wanted something purpose-built for education that could bring in more students.

I owned the migration: consolidated applicant data from Salesforce, CommonApp, and PeopleSoft, mapped schemas, ran reconciliation checks so no records were lost. Led vendor evaluations and cutover planning, trained admissions staff on the new system. Go-live in 10 months.

The honest version: the hardest part wasn't the data. It was redesigning the approval workflows around how the staff actually worked instead of forcing them into Salesforce's shape.