Running your business in the digital era with legacy business systems is undoubtedly a recipe for disaster. In addition to spending a good portion of IT budgets on maintenance, failing to modernize applications can lead to serious business impacts.

Take the case of Southwest Airlines. In December of 2022, their legacy point-to-point planning system that scheduled flights and staff was overwhelmed to handle the chaos of traffic and weather impacts. The meltdown, which occurred during the peak holiday season, cost the airline dearly as it was expected to incur nearly $1 billion in total losses from missed revenue, reimbursements, and refunds.

Legacy application modernization has today become a critical element of business success, especially for large enterprises with a diverse technology ecosystem spanning departments in multiple locations. However, the modernization initiative is not a one-step solution but rather a journey of many stages.

Let us explore the right way to execute a legacy application modernization initiative for better ROI:

Learn About the Business

In most businesses, legacy applications would have been implemented decades ago to support the business needs that existed then. But over the years, the business may have evolved, their customer experience needs may have changed significantly, and several functionalities used in yesteryears may not be relevant today.

The first step in legacy application modernization would be to undertake a deep learning exercise about the business, identify its priorities, and map business outcomes to the technology currently used. This helps in:

Evaluate the Existing Technology Landscape

In the first step, we get an inventory of applications that support the business’s key functions and priorities. The next step is to evaluate how well the existing technology solution is serving the business from perspectives like agility, value generation, and future business fit.

An expert technology consulting partner will be able to identify the pros and cons of each application or module used in your technology landscape and provide recommendations on whether to modernize or re-platform or replace the solution with a new one. This helps in preparing an accurate budget for the initiative and eliminates efforts that would have been spent on unwisely upgrading tech that could not meet present or future requirements.

Create a Data Framework

Today, data is the fundamental building and guiding block of every digital experience. As such, applications must be able to generate as well as leverage data insights to support business growth. For this, application modernization initiatives must be undertaken with a view to transforming applications into data-driven systems as well.

As such, it is crucial to understand and create a robust data framework that can be applied to all systems. It will have policies to:

This will make it easier for tech teams to undertake data migration activities while moving to new systems in the future.

Customizations, Replacements, and Enhancements

This would be the core stage wherein legacy systems are either enhanced, upgraded, or customized to meet new business needs and goals. Or they could even be replaced by new systems altogether, as evaluated in the 2nd stage for future business fit.

In this stage, transformational activities take place, like moving legacy on-premises applications into the cloud or adding new capabilities like analytics on existing technologies after enhancing or reconfiguring them.

Productizing or re-platforming existing systems is done to ensure that the modernized applications are future-proof and easy to upgrade continuously via a product management roadmap. This helps maintain and upgrade the underlying technology stack continuously, as how a product tech company like Facebook or Uber would be running theirs.

User experience enhancements may also be made in this stage if design changes are necessary to stay market competitive.

Systems Integration and Quality Assurance

Modernized applications need to gel with the entire ecosystem of digital services and applications that the business leverages in its operations. Only then would seamless customer experience and operational efficiency be realized as goals of the transformation journey.

System integration activities must be undertaken with strict compliance with data frameworks that have been set in place. This will ensure that modernized applications can achieve seamless interoperability even in the future.

Along with system integration, it is critical to carry out strict testing and quality assurance practices to enable risk-free and faster roll-out of the modernized applications into the market. Continuous testing also allows the timely deployment of corrective measures if there are any risks identified.

Continuous Maintenance

Application modernization initiatives are never a one-time activity. We live in a world where technology is constantly changing, and businesses must embrace this change to stay competitive.

Transforming legacy applications into future-proof digital applications in the right way will ensure that ongoing enhancement activity or change requests can be easily implemented. For this, it is important to have a constant innovation and learning culture while in the maintenance phase of any application.

Periodically checking for business requirements and new developments in the industry is necessary to ensure that modernized applications have a steady upgrade roadmap that keeps them sustainable and competitive in the market.

Migrating in Stages

This is a crucial consideration, and regrettably, one that often doesn’t get the attention it deserves. The truth of the real world is that in most cases, legacy system migration in large enterprises cannot be completed in one go. They would almost always be done over time in multiple stages. There will be a considerable period of time where both legacy and new applications will co-exist. These systems will work in synch, series, or parallel in parts to serve different business services.

This is true even as the modernization initiative looks to bring in new capabilities like AI or analytics. This is why many legacy systems learn to adapt or integrate with these technologies over time. This is also why enterprise software tools live on, long past their projected EOL days. Look at the multiple extensions served up by Oracle for Peoplesoft as an example!

Of course, this means that the legacy application needs to be in focus too. During this overlap period it is critical to support the health of such legacy systems as they would be powering critical functions in the business. Strengthening the legacy application, plotting a clear roadmap for migrating heavy workloads from it and eventually retiring it is the best way forward while migrating to new modern applications in stages.

In a Nutshell

Transforming legacy applications into modern digital solutions involves a long journey that requires end-to-end transformation knowledge, technology acumen, and an innovation outlook. As we have seen, this is a journey of many stages and each stage demands attention, resources, and expertise to get right.

For businesses with non-tech core activities, it will be hard to formulate the right modernization strategy needed to enable risk-free transformation. Surveys conducted in the app modernization space point out that nearly 79% of enterprises have failed in their attempts to modernize apps. This is where an experienced technology partner like iSource can help make a huge difference.

Get in touch with us to learn more about legacy application modernization and experience a seamless transformation of your digital landscape.

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