A system and method allow a user to extract the set of customizations performed on an application and use these to estimate the time and effort and cost of (a) migrating to a new version of the application and/or (b) consolidating systems. The user can browse the extracted data and select configuration elements for re-use. After downloading the one or more configurations and comparing them, the user selects elements of the configurations for re-use. The first step is to scan one or more application systems and extract the configuration data using a surveyor. The method according to the invention automatically identifies configuration differences. The user then selects configuration elements for re-use. A graphic user interface (GUI) can be provided which allows the user to make these selections by dragging and dropping selected elements to a “To Be” configuration. The selected configurations are then uploaded and installed on an instance of the application.