They lurk in every business environment — those systems everyone uses because they just exist and are familiar. They are unreliable, hard to use and drain your time and budget. For any organisation out there, legacy systems pose more risk and challenge than reward.
Business leaders who aspire to grow and gain a competitive edge understand the danger of maintaining and using legacy monoliths. A survey sponsored by AWS and Tata Consultancy Services revealed that 70% of c-suite professionals prioritise legacy system modernisation.
Are you wondering why? Here are the most significant business benefits of legacy system modernisation.
When you reach a maturity stage in your business life cycle and want to grow, you need technology that accelerates you and doesn't slow you down. Unlike legacy systems, modern digital technology facilitates scalability and agility, making it easier and less expensive to scale your business. It empowers you to gain economies of scale, reach new markets, increase your market share or expand to new geographies.
One of the main benefits of modernising legacy systems is that you are not starting from scratch by developing or buying new software, which requires immense costs and causes complexity and disruption for your daily operation. Instead, you integrate modern digital technologies into your outdated systems to innovate new products and services, enhance experiences, and enable process automation. Modernising your legacy systems can lower operational costs, increase efficiency and provide the seamless service your customers require.
Modernising your existing dysfunctional technology is one of the main factors that will impact your plan to exit. To build value before you sell, you need to show investors or potential buyers that your business makes money, operates efficiently and can win and retain customers.
Investing in modernising your existing systems and training your workforce to use them before selling your company, will have a long-term impact on the business. Futureproofing your business will play a significant role in your exit strategy, as investors and buyers must ensure long-term, sustainable success.
Modernising your legacy systems means turning hard to use, insecure and slow technology into agile, efficient and reliable systems. Applying technologies like Business Process Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to your existing systems, can result in tremendous cost savings, improved and more efficient customer service and the development of new sources of revenue.
Additionally, by integrating your existing systems with modern digital technologies, you break the silos created in legacy environments, gain a unified view of your business, and effectively turn data into Business Intelligence. You can use this data to provide a seamless, personalised customer experience that boosts your sales and increases customer satisfaction and retention.
One of the main challenges businesses face in 2022 is talent shortages and employee retention. In fact, 70% of millennials have left or considered leaving their job because it lacked flexible work options, and about half of more senior employees say the same. Since the pandemic, many people have reevaluated the work/life balance. They desire a more flexible work schedule and consider remote or hybrid working as a reason to stay or leave their job.
The on-premises legacy data centres that many organisations use pose a significant challenge to remote or hybrid working. Modernising them and migrating operations to the cloud gives business security, convenience and scalability and allows people to work from anywhere they wish.
As a result of the above, modernising legacy systems offers a competitive edge to the businesses that will do it right. Your business will scale and gain market share; you will attract and retain top talent and transform outdated and inefficient services to provide an excellent customer experience. With a modernised technology stack, you will be able to launch new innovative digital products and services to create new revenue streams and win over the competition.
