Saba to Cornerstone Migration & LMS Data Migration
The clock is ticking and the stakes are real
Saba’s end-of-life put renewal deadlines on calendars across government agencies, healthcare systems, and universities, and SumTotal buyers face the same pressure. You have years of learner records, completions, certifications, and compliance history an audit-ready organization can’t reconstruct from scratch.
The integrations are what keep migration teams up at night. Workday feeds your org chart, SAP manages payroll-adjacent compliance, and the rest of your stack has to keep working the day after cutover. Learners mid-stream have to keep their progress too. We validate row by row throughout, so problems surface early instead of on cutover night.
What the engine does on a migration
The GroveDeck engine validates continuously, checking every record against the source so discrepancies surface where they’re cheap to fix. If the Workday sync drifts or a SCORM package fails to resolve, it flags it before a learner hits it. Our Certified Cornerstone Experts own the go/no-go, and the rollback plan is written before we touch production.
What’s included
Saba, SumTotal, and other LMS
Records, transcripts, certifications, content. Absorb LMS, Docebo, or a homegrown system too: if it has data, we can scope it.
Integration re-wiring
Workday, SAP, ADP: mapped before cutover, validated after.
Row-by-row validation
Every record checked against the source, multiple times. A complete reconciliation before cutover.
And post-go-live, we stay in your tenant through stabilization and fix the edge cases that surface in week one. You don’t find out from a learner.
The migration timeline
Discovery and field mapping come first: the gap list is built and every field matched to its Cornerstone equivalent before any data moves. Data then loads into a staging tenant for validation passes until the gap count is zero. Cutover runs off-hours with a tested rollback plan and Certified Cornerstone Experts present, going live only on a clean go/no-go. Stabilization runs through week ten while the engine monitors around the clock.
Three ways organizations handle this, and what they each cost
| GroveDeck | Internal team only | Big consultancy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cornerstone expertise | All we do | Depends on who you have | One of dozens of LMS projects |
| Validation approach | Row-by-row, engine-automated, throughout | Manual, usually at the end | Spot check + final reconciliation |
| Integration ownership | We map and validate Workday, SAP, others | Coordination overhead + internal politics | Separate workstream, often separate SOW |
| Post-go-live | Stabilization through week ten | Back to the day job | Project closes at go-live |
| Contract | Fixed scope, no lock-in after | Sunk cost regardless of outcome | Six-figure project scope |
Questions we hear most
Saba EOL: what’s actually at risk if we wait?
You’re running unsupported software once it goes end-of-life, and the window to export your data cleanly narrows as it degrades. The earlier we start, the more validation time we have, and a five-business-day written assessment scopes it before any work begins.
Will we lose learner history or completion records?
Not if it’s done right. We map every transcript, completion, and certification before a single row moves, and surface any source-data gaps during discovery.
How do you handle Workday and SAP during cutover?
Workday’s org structure feeds Cornerstone’s user data, so any break shows up immediately in enrollment and reporting. We test in staging and validate again post-cutover, and the engine monitors the sync during stabilization.
What happens to our SCORM content?
SCORM packages move with the migration. We verify they launch, track, and report correctly before go-live, and flag anything already broken in Saba so you can fix or retire it.
What we also do
After cutover, we can run the tenant for you: see Platform ownership. Need accessible courses built? See Content development.
A migration is the wrong time to be alone
Years of learner records. A deadline you didn’t set. Integrations that have to keep working. We stay until it’s done right, not just until go-live. Month to month after stabilization, or a clean handoff. Your call.