Migration debt

I finished an AI for HR course and started evaluating platforms with fresh eyes. The switch has been harder than expected. Not because the new tool is difficult, but because I’d trained one system to understand how I work. Starting over means rebuilding that context from scratch.

It reminded me of every HRIS migration, payroll transition, and ATS upgrade I’ve led. The longer an organization waits to move off a system that no longer works, the more expensive the switch becomes. And I don’t just mean cost.

Bad data compounds. You inherit years of workarounds, inconsistent fields, and patches that became the process. Outdated platforms create migration debt: data structures that made sense a decade ago don’t map cleanly to modern systems, and the gap widens every year you wait. Poor user experience affects outcomes, so candidates abandon applications, employees stop updating their information, and managers bypass the system entirely.

We stay in old systems because we’ve invested. We stay because switching feels disruptive. But the cost of staying in something that no longer serves you compounds faster than the cost of rebuilding.

The best time to switch was probably years ago.