Business
Challenges

Organisations that have outdated, incorrect or insufficient enterprise applications for their needs are holding themselves back substantially. In particular, if they have legacy systems in place, they will find it hard to keep pace with competitors and/or meet stakeholder expectations in four key areas:

Modernisation

Legacy IT systems tend to be inflexible, short of vital modern security standards, and integrate poorly with other systems and applications (if indeed, they integrate at all). This hampers efforts to innovate with new products and services faster than competitors can.

Security is a major issue as cybercrime continues to rise in the number of threats, and their levels of sophistication. Without the latest firewalls and encryption protocols in place, cybercriminals are far more able to explore vulnerabilities and gain access to sensitive information. And yet despite this, two-thirds of businesses are still using legacy technology for core business operations, and 60% are using them for customer-facing use cases.

Cost management

Older systems cost more to run for a number of different reasons: increasing amounts of hardware and software maintenance, ongoing support fees, additional power and cooling needs, and procuring spare parts that become harder and harder to get hold of over time.

The amount of IT budget that legacy maintenance swallows up can leave an organisation with less money to improve and innovate elsewhere. In fact, the UK government allocates almost half of its IT budget on maintaining legacy IT systems. At a time when IT budgets are often stretched, this is a common reason why some organisations find themselves falling behind their competitors.

User experience

Older interfaces within legacy technologies are increasingly unfit for purpose. Whether they’re slow or just hard to read, they can be difficult and frustrating for employees and customers to use, which can lead to reduced employee satisfaction and lower rates of sales conversions.

Both internally and externally, people expect fast, easy, stress-free, and intuitive technology, and those whose expectations aren't met will seek alternatives.

Customer satisfaction and retention

Connected to the previous point, legacy systems can cause extensive harm to the customer experience because they tend to be less convenient. Frequent customer complaints around older services and technologies include performance, support, shipping, inventory, and even trust in data security measures.

Research has found that a 5% improvement in customer retention can make a 25% difference to profitability over time. This means that even a relatively minor issue caused by outdated technology and experiences can have a deep, long-lasting impact.

Contact a specialist