# 4. Before moving from spreadsheets to GRC software, what must be cleaned—and what history must remain recoverable?

**A good answer should separate cleansing, transformation, historical preservation and reconciliation.** “Import the spreadsheet” is not a sufficient migration scope.

**Why it matters to buyers.** IBM OpenPages documentation distinguishes configuration items, instance data and parent–child relationships. Its environment-migration tooling also has version and patch-level conditions. These distinctions illustrate why a migration plan must identify what is being moved and by which mechanism; they do not prove complete portability to another vendor. ([ibm.com](https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/openpages/9.1.0?topic=environments-supported-migration-items))

**Put it to:** Michael Rasmussen, a migration lead and a recent buyer who reconciled a completed migration.

**A strong answer should cover this proposed GRC data migration checklist:**

| Data area | Buyer question |
|---|---|
| Identity | Which immutable source identifiers survive, and how are target identifiers mapped? |
| Ownership | Who resolves missing current owners without overwriting historical authorship? |
| Relationships | How are controls linked to risks, obligations, entities, tests and findings? |
| History | Which approvals, prior results and changes remain searchable or are retained in an accessible archive? |
| Evidence | Are files copied or linked, and how are versions, access and broken links handled? |
| Reconciliation | Which counts, relationships, timestamps and selected records are checked before acceptance? |

**Ask for proof:** a trial migration containing duplicate controls, a departed owner, a closed finding, restricted evidence and a broken relationship. Require an exception log, not just a successful import message.

**Follow-up:** “Which defects must be fixed before pricing, which can be quarantined, and who can approve an unresolved exception?”

> **Expert quote — pending interview:** [Insert approved quotation and attribution.]