While outdated legacy applications may have once served their purpose, their extended use prevents companies from benefiting—and profiting—from new technological capabilities.
Often legacy applications are a symptom of outdated business processes. They can waste an organization’s time and money, two things in short supply in any competitive industry.
Here are 6 reasons why more companies are looking at legacy application modernization:
Reason #1: Competitive Advantage
Technological advances can offer competitive advantages. Not only does a company want to harness those abilities for themselves, but they must compete with other companies that are already doing the same thing. Enterprise legacy application modernization offers insights that can help companies perform more effectively in their markets. The ability to use technology for business transformation can lead an organization to a more favorable position with updated strategies and systems.
Reason #2: Opportunities for Future Growth
While legacy applications can hinder efficiency, they also can prevent organizations from seeing and benefiting from opportunities for future growth. Often the energy required to maintain existing processes can be better served by developing new approaches or finding opportunities stemming from changes in the market. For example, companies may find that cloud computing services make it easier and faster to perform some operations, saving time and resources that can be refocused in other ways. Because cloud-native systems are designed to embrace rapid technological change, they also help with an organization’s needs for future scalability and adaptability.
Reason #3: Improved Security
Security is a key component of any digital transformation strategy. System and data security constantly evolve, and legacy systems are far more likely to fall victim to cyber-attacks and data breaches. Legacy application modernization offers companies a chance to benefit from the latest security protocols and technology. Security processes should be built—and constantly updated and refined—in all digital components to protect a company’s data and assets.
Reason #4: Evolving Customer Expectations
As customers experience technological advancements with other companies, their expectations change over time. Even if your customers don’t interact directly with your legacy applications, they’ll be able to tell by the information you can provide them or the workflows you use. As an example of evolving customer expectations, the overall mobile user experience changes all the time, and it’s a key to the success of mobile apps. Developing a custom mobile application requires close consideration of what the end user expects, including features, user interface, functionality, design, and more.
Reason #5: Reduced Costs/Increased Revenue
Because the cost of legacy applications isn’t always clear, most companies don’t understand how much maintaining old systems really costs. These applications also become more costly to keep up and running over time, if you can find someone who knows how to maintain them. Using outdated technologies wastes money that could be used for other purposes that can offer increased revenue opportunities through improved efficiencies or expanding market reach. When it’s time to expand, technological advances also can help companies add new services or product lines.
Reason #6: Business Intelligence
Technology can unlock business intelligence from data in ways that weren’t possible even a few years ago. Legacy application modernization can connect a company’s data stores in ways that generate valuable information. For example, cloud migration is the process of moving digital business operations into the cloud, which can offer new ways to integrate different data sources to provide insights. Data analytics can be used to improve any number of business activities, from sales to marketing to customer satisfaction, and more.
Businesses looking to modernize their legacy applications have many reasons to decide that the time is right. Contact InApp for more information about how we can help you.
