Getting existing info into the system
We handle this by scanning the feed from the legacy/currrent system and use a zonal OCR programme to 'find' whats required from each page and feed this into an excel file or whatever for easy upload to your new system.
Zonal OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is when you define what field/s on the page you want pulled from the old data and it will 'look' in these fields for the data. works well when you have a structured system but not so well when the data is spread with no particular pattern.
Ultimately, if you dont spend time on migrating the old data to your new system properly then you will have problems. turning junk into junk as they say...