Retire your Sage People Salesforce org, preserve every Worker__c and Salary__c record in compliant archive, capture the Apex/Flow customization catalog, unwind integrations, sunset the Sage Group relationship — and avoid £1M+/year of recurring licence cost.
Leaving a Sage People Salesforce org running 'just in case' is the most expensive way to satisfy compliance. Decommissioning properly removes the cost without losing the data, customizations, or audit trail.
After migrating active HR operations to Oracle Fusion HCM, Workday, or another modern platform, the temptation is to leave the source Sage People org running in read-only mode 'just in case audit asks' or 'in case HR needs an ex-employee lookup'. That instinct is understandable but the cost is staggering: £1M–£3M per year for a mid-to-large customer in Sage People licences, Salesforce Platform fees, integration tier, storage overage, and admin staff time.
Sage People decommissioning is the alternative path. The complete data set moves to compliant cloud archive. The customization catalog (Apex, Flow, Visualforce, custom fields) is captured as evidence. Integrations are gracefully unwound to the new HCM. A historical reporting layer satisfies HR ops, payroll, audit, and ex-employee DSAR access. The Salesforce org is shut down; Sage commercial relationship terminated. Annual run-rate drops 60–90%.
Done properly, decommissioning is a structured, evidence-producing project — not a 'just turn it off' moment. Syntra ETL provides the technical platform and the playbook that's been refined across multiple Sage People decommission engagements.
Six artefact classes that together replace the live Sage People org as the source of truth for everything historical.
Worker__c, Employment_Record__c, Position__c, Department, Location — complete employment chain per former worker, effective-dated and timestamped.
Salary__c versions, Bonus, Allowance, Salary Review outcomes, Pay Component history — full compensation chain with approver context for tribunal defence and audit.
Leave_Request__c history, accrual balances at each year-end, UK statutory leave records (SSP, SMP, SPP) with HMRC-relevant evidence.
Apex class/trigger source, Flow XML, Process Builder definitions, Visualforce pages, Lightning components, validation rules, custom field definitions — 'what did the system do?' evidence.
MuleSoft flows, point-to-point integration specs, payroll feed contracts, SSO configuration, data contract with each downstream system.
Salesforce Profile, Permission Set, sharing rule, role hierarchy at decommission date — evidence layer for access-control audit during retention window.
A repeatable, governed workflow built for Sage People's Salesforce-platform structure. Typical timeline: 12–20 weeks.
Read Salesforce Metadata API: every Apex class, trigger, Flow, ProcessBuilder, Visualforce page, custom field on Sage People objects. Inventory integrations (MuleSoft, Data Loader, point-to-point), reports, dashboards. Output: complete decommission scope document signed by HR, IT, compliance, and finance.
Sage People extractor pulls every custom object — full history, terminated workers included. Output staged as Parquet, partitioned and hash-signed. Customization catalog captured in parallel. Archive validated against sample live-system queries.
Saved query library built for HR ops use cases. DSAR portal stood up for ex-employees. SSO integrated with corporate IdP. Role-based access tiers configured. Pre-materialised datasets for HMRC and audit access.
Each integration cut over to new HCM in planned sequence. Payroll first (so RTI submissions don't miss a cycle). Then SSO, learning, benefits, pension. Each cutover validated end-to-end before next.
1–2 pay cycles in parallel — Sage People still live for fallback, new HCM authoritative. Final delta extraction captures any last writes to Sage People. Sign-off pack issued.
Sage People licences reduced to minimal read-only count, then terminated. Salesforce org marked for deletion per data-return clause. Commercial notice issued to Sage Group. Decommission complete.
Six line items that drop from annual run-rate the moment the Salesforce org goes dark.
Even read-only audit-count licences run £15–40 per user per month. For 5,000 employees that's £900K–£2.4M/year — eliminated entirely.
Bundled with Sage People but a real component of the cost stack. Decommission eliminates the platform fee alongside the Sage People licence.
Multi-year Worker__c, Leave_Request__c, Salary__c history pushes orgs past included storage allocation. Overage typically £400-2,000/month at scale.
MuleSoft Anypoint or equivalent platform connecting Sage People to payroll, learning, benefits — typically £80-200K/year. No live integrations needed for archive.
Salesforce admin time for user management, security patches, managed-package upgrades, audit access — typically £80-150K/year fully loaded.
Twice-yearly Sage People managed-package releases require regression testing, customization compatibility checks — 4-8 person-weeks/year that go away.
Sage People decommissioning is the structured retirement of a Sage People (Salesforce-platform) HCM instance once its operational use has ended. It covers six phases: (1) data preservation — every Worker__c, Employment_Record__c, Salary__c, Leave_Request__c, custom-object record extracted to long-term archive with full schema and audit trail; (2) customization catalog — Apex, Flow, Process Builder, Visualforce, Lightning components, custom fields, validation rules captured as evidence; (3) integration disconnect — MuleSoft, Salesforce Data Loader, native point-to-point integrations with payroll, learning, SSO, benefits gracefully unwound; (4) historical reporting layer — consumer-side access for HR, payroll, audit, ex-employees stood up; (5) Salesforce org wind-down — licence reduction to read-only or full cancellation; (6) vendor sunsetting — Sage Group commercial relationship terminated. Syntra ETL handles phases 1, 2, 4 and supports phases 3, 5, 6 with documentation and process.
Substantial. Sage People licensing is per-user-per-month on top of the bundled Salesforce Platform licence. For a 5,000-employee customer at typical pricing (£15–40 per user per month), annual cost runs £900K–£2.4M just for the Sage People licence, plus the Salesforce Platform licence component, plus any add-ons (Sage People Recruit, Sage People Talent), plus Salesforce storage overage at scale (multi-year history can push past included allocation, adding £500–2,000/month). Total run-rate to keep Sage People alive as an idle compliance-only instance is typically £1.2M–£3.0M/year for a mid-to-large customer. Decommissioning to Syntra's archive replaces all of that with cloud storage (pennies per GB-month) plus the archive query service — total typically £80–150K/year. 90% saving on a multi-million-pound line item.
Through a complete extraction to Syntra's archive before the Salesforce org is shut down. The extraction covers every Sage People custom object (Worker__c, Employment_Record__c, Salary__c, Leave_Request__c, Position__c, plus any customer-added objects), every standard Salesforce object in scope (Contact records linked to workers, Files/Attachments holding contracts/documents), and the full metadata catalog (Apex classes, triggers, Flows, Process Builders, Visualforce pages, Lightning components, validation rules, custom fields, page layouts). Data lands as Parquet with embedded schema; metadata lands as structured JSON with original source code. Everything is hash-signed and timestamped — defensible as the canonical record of what your Sage People system held and what it did.
Each integration is unwound in a planned sequence — typically the last phase of the decommission timeline. Common Sage People integrations include: payroll feeds to Sage 50 Payroll or third-party HMRC RTI providers (these cut over to the new HCM's payroll integration before Sage People shutdown); SSO via SAML to Salesforce (users repointed to the new HCM's SSO before Sage People licences are removed); learning platform integration (LMS connectors switched to consume the new HCM's worker feed); benefits and pension provider feeds (provider integrations re-configured to read from the new HCM); recruiting platform integration (where Sage People Recruit feeds candidate data into Workday/Greenhouse). Syntra ETL documents each integration in the discovery phase and supports the sequencing in the decommission plan.
Customizations don't 'migrate' as code — they get catalogued as evidence and either (a) re-implemented natively in the new HCM target during migration, or (b) retired entirely if the new HCM provides the capability natively. Syntra ETL's discovery engine reads the Salesforce Metadata API to inventory every Apex class, trigger, Salesforce Flow, Process Builder, Visualforce page, Lightning Web Component, validation rule, formula field, and custom field added to the standard Sage People managed package. Each customization gets classified by business purpose and given a recommendation. Customers typically find 50–70% of Sage People customizations are gap-fillers that the new HCM (Fusion, Workday) provides natively — those get retired during migration. The remaining 30–50% get re-implemented in HCM Design Studio, OIC integrations, VBCS pages, or Workday Studio steps.
Knowledge transfer is essential and often under-budgeted. Syntra ETL's decommission package includes documentation of: every customization with its business purpose (not just the Apex source), every integration with its data contract and counter-party owner, every report and dashboard with its consumer and refresh cadence, every security configuration (Profile, Permission Set, sharing rule, role hierarchy) with the rationale, every scheduled job and batch process. This documentation lives alongside the data archive so a future auditor or HR business partner asking 'why did this happen?' has access to the answer even after the Sage People admin team is gone. We recommend running this knowledge-capture phase while admins are still in role, not after.
The commercial sunset has three threads. Licence termination: standard contractual notice (typically 90 days but check your MSA) before contract anniversary; ensure the termination notice references both Sage People-specific licences and the bundled Salesforce Platform component. Data return / destruction: Sage People customer agreements include a data-return clause — typically 30 days from termination during which you can export remaining data, after which Sage may destroy it. Syntra's archive extraction must complete BEFORE this window closes. Support and managed-services wind-down: any Sage People professional services or managed-services engagement needs separate notice. The Syntra decommission timeline includes commercial milestone checkpoints to align technical and commercial decommission.
Typical timeline is 12–20 weeks from kick-off to Sage People licence termination, assuming the new HCM (Fusion, Workday) is either already live or going live in parallel. Breakdown: weeks 1–4 discovery and customization catalog; weeks 3–8 data extraction to archive; weeks 5–10 historical reporting layer stand-up; weeks 8–14 integration unwind (each integration cut over to new HCM); weeks 12–18 parallel-run validation and final delta replay; weeks 16–20 Salesforce org shutdown, licence termination, knowledge transfer hand-off. Customers running Sage People decommission in parallel with the new HCM go-live typically run a 1–2 pay cycle parallel period before final Sage People shutdown.
30-minute call. We'll walk through your Sage People footprint, current annual cost, integration profile, target HCM, and retention requirements — and quantify the annual cost reduction and timeline.