Migrate from Centrium CRM to Zoho CRM

Centrium Contact records split into Zoho Leads and Contacts based on the contact-company flag and any status field indicating qualification. Centrium contacts marked as organization-flagged (organizations) are excluded from this mapping and routed to the Account creation step first. Unqualified individual contacts without an organization assignment migrate as Zoho Leads; contacts with an established organization relationship migrate as Zoho Contacts tied to the corresponding Account.

Centrium does not have a distinct Companies/Accounts object — organizations are contacts with an organization flag. During preprocessing, we identify all flagged contacts, create corresponding Zoho Account records, then re-link the individual Contact records to the Account via the Account Name lookup. This preprocessing step adds scope to the migration timeline for accounts with large organization lists and must complete before any Contact import to satisfy the AccountId lookup requirement.

Centrium Deals map to Zoho CRM Potential records. The Centrium status field (won/open/lost) maps to the nearest Zoho pipeline stage — open maps to the first open stage in the target pipeline, won maps to Closed Won, and lost maps to Closed Lost. Any Centrium deal notes or descriptions migrate as the Potential Description field. Because Centrium has no intermediate stage timestamps, the Zoho stage history audit trail begins at migration time rather than from the original deal creation date.

Centrium Tasks migrate to Zoho Tasks with Subject, Due Date, Status, Priority, and the assignee email preserved. We resolve assignee email against Zoho User records by email match. Any Centrium Task with an assignee who has no matching Zoho User is flagged in the reconciliation report and assigned to the importing admin pending manual user provisioning in Zoho.

Centrium Projects are lightweight containers linking tasks and contacts without a dedicated Zoho Project module in standard CRM. We migrate the project name as a Zoho Tag or a custom lookup field on the associated tasks, preserving the project-task grouping. If the customer requires a full project management system, Zoho Projects is a separate application outside the CRM migration scope; we flag this gap in the deliverables.

Centrium Notes migrate to Zoho Notes attached to the parent object (Contact, Account, or Potential). Note body migrates as the Note content field. Multi-message conversation threads in Centrium Note attachments map as individual Note records since Notes are not threaded in either platform.

Centrium custom fields use a simplified property map schema. We extract the field definition and values per record during the extract phase and create equivalent custom fields in Zoho CRM (Custom Fields module) before import. Field types are mapped to the nearest Zoho field type — text to single-line, numeric to integer or decimal, date to date picker. Custom fields on the organization-flagged Contact records apply to the corresponding Zoho Account after the Account split.

Centrium users (name, email, team-level role) map to Zoho Users by email match. Centrium's team-level permission model has no granular role equivalent in Zoho RBAC, so we assign all migrated records to the importing admin user and flag the permission gap in the reconciliation report for manual post-migration role assignment in Zoho's Profiles and Roles module.

Centrium exposes attachments through the UI but not through a documented public API. We flag attachments that cannot be retrieved via the UI export as a scope constraint. For accounts where attachment volumes fit within Zoho's storage allocation (1Gb on Free, higher on paid plans), we recommend exporting attachments manually from Centrium and uploading to Zoho Files or attaching to the relevant record post-migration. Large attachment volumes require external storage planning before migration.

Centrium uses a team-level permission model without granular role definitions. This model does not map to Zoho's Profiles and Roles system, which is required for Zoho CRM. We do not migrate permissions. All migrated records are assigned to the importing admin user. We deliver a written permissions gap analysis listing the Centrium team roles and recommending Zoho Profiles and Roles equivalents for the customer's admin to configure post-migration.