How to Migrate From Salesforce to a Custom CRM

When moving off Salesforce makes sense

Salesforce is deep, well supported and the right choice for many companies, especially those with large sales teams that use its standard objects as designed. Teams usually start looking for a way out for one of three reasons: the org has been customized so heavily that the standard objects are mostly workarounds, most users only need a small fraction of the platform, or the real work happens in another system and Salesforce has become a place reps update after the fact. Tepia hears all three in Discovery.

Before deciding, compare the options honestly in Salesforce vs HubSpot vs custom CRM. A middle path is common: keep Salesforce for the sales team and build a custom app for operations or field staff through Salesforce integration. This guide covers the full move, for teams that have already made that call.

Step by step: migrating from Salesforce

1. Audit the org. Export the metadata: objects, fields, record types, picklist values, page layouts, Flows, validation rules, Apex classes and triggers, approval processes, reports, dashboards and email templates. Mark each one keep, redesign or retire.
2. Interview users by role. Ask reps, managers and operations staff what they use every day. Most orgs carry fields and reports nobody has opened in a year.
3. Design the new data model. Map Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, Cases and custom objects to a schema that fits how you sell, rather than copying Salesforce field for field.
4. Rebuild the logic. Turn validation rules into server side checks, Flows into event driven jobs, and approval processes into explicit workflow states with audit history.
5. Export the data. Use Data Loader or the Bulk API for records, export Tasks and Events for activity history, and pull Attachments, Notes and ContentVersion files with their links to parent records.
6. Transform and load. Merge duplicates, normalize picklists, map owners to new user accounts and store each Salesforce ID in a legacy ID field.
7. Reconnect integrations. Replace connections to Outlook or Gmail, marketing automation, e signature tools and your ERP, and redirect any middleware that calls Salesforce.
8. Run in parallel, then retire. Operate both systems for an agreed window, reconcile counts and totals, then set Salesforce to read only and keep a final full export as an archive.

Tepia schedules the final cutover well ahead of your Salesforce contract end date, leaving room for a second parallel run if reconciliation finds gaps.

What moves, what gets rebuilt and what gets retired

Not everything in a Salesforce org should survive the move. Tepia sorts each component into one of three outcomes and agrees the list with your team before any data moves.

The Apex row is where surprises hide. A trigger that quietly recalculates a commission field or creates a renewal opportunity is a business rule, and Tepia writes a test for each one before the new CRM goes live.

Data quality, permissions and user adoption

A migration is the best chance you will get to clean CRM data. Tepia runs duplicate detection on accounts and contacts, standardizes states, countries and phone formats, and flags records with no activity in years so your team can archive them instead of carrying them forward. Our CRM data migration work follows the same rules on every project.

Permissions need a fresh design. Sharing rules, role hierarchies and permission sets pile up over years, and the new CRM should express the same intent in a simpler model: reps see their territory, managers see their team, finance sees everything read only. Tepia documents each rule in plain language and has your managers sign off before it is built.

Adoption decides whether the move was worth it. Reps who relied on one Salesforce report will judge the new CRM by whether that view exists on day one, so Tepia builds the handful of screens each role uses most before anything else and puts them in front of users during Beta.

How Tepia approaches a Salesforce to custom CRM migration

A US based project manager runs the migration through Tepia’s six phases.

1. Discovery: metadata export, usage analysis, interviews by role and a review of every integration that touches Salesforce. Deliverables are an Investigation Summary, an Interview Summary and User Stories such as a rep logging a site visit from a phone between meetings.
2. Design: a design questionnaire, moodboards, a style guide and wireframes for the pipeline board, account record and mobile views.
3. Development and Testing: an Alpha loaded with a full copy of your data, then a Beta with one sales team, with test plans for migrated record counts, rebuilt automation, permissions and user acceptance.
4. Training: role based sessions built on scenarios like converting a lead or handing an account to customer success.
5. Launch: final delta migration, integration cutover, Salesforce switched to read only and support reps on the rollout.
6. Support: issue resolution, bug tracking, and feature requests that used to wait in an admin’s queue.

Expect Discovery to take 1 to 3 months, development and QA 2 to 6 months, and launch roughly a month. Orgs with heavy Apex or many packages land at the longer end. See our process, the guide on building a custom CRM, or contact Tepia to review your org.

Frequently asked questions