Why we named a data migration company after a bird
The bar-tailed godwit flies Alaska to New Zealand non-stop. That's the whole pitch.
Every autumn, bar-tailed godwits leave the mudflats of Alaska and fly to New Zealand. Thirteen thousand kilometres. Non-stop. No refuelling, no staging posts, no second attempts. The satellite-tagged record holder did it in eleven days. The birds arrive lighter, on schedule, with nothing lost en route.
That is precisely the standard a regulated data migration has to meet, and it's rarer than it should be. Migrations in financial services have a reputation: nine-month programmes, day-rate meters, cutover weekends that spill into cutover months, and — worst of all — a quiet uncertainty at the end about whether everything actually made it across.
The uncertainty is the product failure
A wealth manager merging an acquired book doesn't really buy ETL. They buy the ability to stand in front of their board, their auditors, and if it comes to it the FCA, and show that every client record, every holding, every transaction moved correctly. If you can't prove it, you haven't finished — you've just stopped.
So we named the firm for the bird that completes the journey with nothing lost, and we built the delivery model around producing the proof: row-level reconciliation of every record, financial totals agreed to the penny, exceptions dispositioned, compiled into an evidence pack compliance can file.
Also, candidly: the boardrooms of UK financial services contain more birdwatchers than anyone admits. If the name made you smile, you're our people.
Got a cutover date? Tell us the source system, the target, and the deadline — we'll tell you within 48 hours whether we can hit it and what the Assessment will cost.
freddie@godwit.uk