We transferred from SIMS to Facility a year and a half ago. I would emphasise the following, some of which are mentioned above. Serco will transfer your data across, however for us they only transferred the 1 years worth of data. This meant that we still have to go into SIMS to look for historical information. They did not transfer any of our assessment or behaviour log information. I was not part of the decision making process and only started overseeing after the switch over.
We ran with Facility only from the start and did not run 2 systems in tandem. There are benefits to both, we were forced to fully embrace Facility immediately. However the data transfer was not perfect and there is a lot of checking to do. We ran with Facility from September 1st and I ran the Census in late September with it. I would advise using the 2 systems in tandem for no more than 1 term.
