Migrating from Accruent EMS: A Step-by-Step Checklist for Facilities Teams

Summary

Migrating off Accruent EMS is a real project, not a button you push. Historical booking data, integrations, admin permissions, and years of staff habit are all on the line, and getting any of them wrong creates weeks of cleanup. But it’s also a well-understood process. This post is a step-by-step checklist covering pre-migration planning, data export, platform configuration, training, cutover, and decommissioning, plus honest answers to the two questions every facilities team asks first: what actually goes wrong, and how long does this take.

One Maptician customer, an AmLaw 100 firm with more than 2,100 employees across 20-plus offices, put the “why migrate” question plainly:

“For more than a decade, we operated with an outdated and inefficient system for managing conference rooms and seating. It lacked real-time data, integration, and visibility, especially around who was in the office. Coordinating a single meeting meant checking multiple disconnected reports for AV setups, catering, and room layouts… We had no way to view space usage at a glance or generate meaningful reports to inform decisions. It created daily inefficiencies and constant frustration. We really struggled.”

Joni Andrews, Regional Director of Office Administration, Husch Blackwell

Why Teams Migrate Away from Accruent EMS

EMS is strongest as a configurable scheduling and resource-management system: it does room and desk booking well, and layers utilization reporting, visitor check-in, and meeting-service requests around those bookings. Independent reviews on G2 and Gartner Peer Insights consistently praise its depth of configuration. But firms increasingly switch from Accruent EMS for a different reason: they want real-time confirmation of who’s actually in the office, tied directly to space, visitor, and planning data, not a system that tells you what was reserved and, after the fact, what a report says about usage. That gap between “what was booked” and “what actually happened in the space” is often the real trigger, alongside the setup and interface friction that EMS users experience.

It’s also frequently tied to a broader space strategy shift, not just software fatigue. Nearly half of law firms (46%) cut their seat-to-attorney ratio in the past year, with only 8% increasing it, according to Maptician’s 2025 Law Firm Workplace Trends survey. A firm that’s actively resizing its footprint is also a firm re-evaluating the tools it uses to plan and track that space, and that’s often when a platform switch enters the conversation.

Before You Migrate: Pre-Migration Planning

• Identify a project owner and key stakeholders. Facilities, IT, HR/people ops, and office admins should all have a seat at the table before you touch any data.
• Set a realistic timeline and target cutover date. Work backward from a date that matters to the business (a lease renewal, a new office opening, a fiscal year start) rather than picking one arbitrarily.
• Confirm your Accruent EMS contract end date and any data-retention or export deadlines with Accruent. This is frequently the actual bottleneck in a migration timeline, not the new platform’s setup.
• Inventory what “success” looks like. Decide what reports, workflows, and integrations must carry over versus what you’re willing to rebuild fresh in the new system.

The Accruent EMS Migration Checklist

• Audit your current EMS setup. Rooms, desks, and resource inventory; booking rules and approval workflows; user roles and permissions; existing integrations (Outlook, Zoom, AV, HVAC, access control); active reports and dashboards leadership relies on.
• Export your data. Room and resource lists, historical booking data, recurring reservations, user and contact lists. Confirm the export format ahead of time, and request an export directly from Accruent if self-service export is limited.
• Map your data to the new platform. Match room and resource categories, seating charts, and permission tiers to the new system’s structure. Flag anything that won’t map one-to-one early. This is usually where scope creep and surprises happen.
• Plan your integrations. SSO/identity provider, calendar sync (Outlook/Google), access-control and AV systems, and any HR system that feeds user provisioning.
• Configure the new platform. Floor plans, room and desk setup, booking policies, visitor management rules, and presence or attendance signals, if applicable.
• Migrate and validate data. Load exported data into the new system and spot-check it against the old system for accuracy before going further. If your legacy platform holds years of historical meeting data, ask whether your new vendor can automate the import rather than requiring manual re-entry. When Husch Blackwell moved off its legacy system, Maptician built a dedicated tool to transfer historical meeting data automatically, which is worth asking about if your firm is sitting on a decade of booking history.
• Train administrators first, then end users. Admins need deeper training on configuration and reporting. End users mainly need booking and check-in basics.
• Run a parallel or pilot period. One floor, one office, or one team runs on the new system while the rest stays on EMS, so you catch issues before full cutover.
• Set a cutover date and communicate it clearly. Build an internal comms plan, update signage and kiosk instructions, and send a clear “as of this date” message to the whole organization.
• Decommission Accruent EMS. Confirm your final data export and backup, cancel or let the contract lapse per its terms, and remove old integrations and hardware configs.
• Run a post-migration review. Check adoption rates, compare utilization data to your pre-migration assumptions, and gather feedback from admins and employees.

Common Migration Pitfalls to Avoid

• Underestimating data-mapping time. Room and resource categories rarely match one-to-one between platforms, and this step almost always takes longer than teams expect.
• Skipping the parallel or pilot period and going straight to a hard cutover. A pilot is what catches configuration mistakes while they’re still cheap to fix.
• Training only administrators and assuming end users will figure it out. A platform that’s intuitive still needs a short, deliberate rollout to end users, not a one-line email.
• Not confirming Accruent’s data-export process and deadlines early enough. This is often the actual bottleneck in a migration, not the new platform’s setup.

How Long Does an Accruent EMS Migration Take?

Timeline depends on your organization’s size, number of locations, and integration complexity, so there’s no single number that applies to every firm. But it’s worth knowing what’s realistic on the fast end. When an AmLaw 200 firm needed to replace its previously selected workplace software at its Denver office on a strict post-Labor Day deadline, three weeks out, Maptician committed to that timeline and delivered on it, on budget and with no additional fees. The rollout grew from 40 users to 554 across the firm’s other offices within 60 days.

“Maptician has proved to be an integral partner in our hybrid workplace efforts with an excellent team and product. The solution demonstrates a seamless deployment with ease for both users and administrators bringing confidence for the expansion of use in numerous offices.”

CIO, AmLaw 200 firm, Denver office

Why Facilities Teams Choose Maptician for Migration

Rapid implementation, minimal IT lift. The Denver rollout above happened in three weeks with no added fees. That kind of timeline is possible because Maptician’s team handles floor plan drawing, environment setup, and data migration directly, rather than requiring your IT team to run a heavy discovery and configuration process on their own.

One connected platform instead of several disconnected ones. Migrating consolidates what you’re managing, not just where you’re managing it. Husch Blackwell’s Regional Director of Office Administration described the shift after moving off the firm’s legacy system:

“What really impressed me was the rapid implementation. We transitioned from legacy systems to Maptician in just six months, and it was one of the most successful projects we’ve ever done. The transition was seamless, with the Maptician team offering top-notch support.”

Joni Andrews, Regional Director of Office Administration, Husch Blackwell

Deep legal and financial-services vertical credibility. Maptician’s implementation team has run migrations for AmLaw 100 and AmLaw 200 firms and financial-services organizations specifically, which means the questions your compliance, IT, and facilities teams raise during a migration aren’t new ones for them.

Find the Right Partner for Your Migration

Migrating off a legacy platform doesn’t have to mean disruption. With the right checklist and the right partner, it’s a manageable, well-understood transition, not a reason to stay on a system that no longer fits how your firm actually works.

Talk to Maptician About Your Migration: Request a Demo