What to Consider When Upgrading Your Business Systems

Eventually in every company’s lifecycle, legacy infrastructure requires upgrades or replacement to keep pace with growth and evolving needs. Nevertheless, change brings disruption and demands thoughtful planning centered on boosting efficiency instead of change purely for its own sake.

Align Improvements With Strategic Goals

The worst technology changes get dictated by the appeal of bright, shiny new tools rather than fixing clearly defined problems or moving toward well-articulated goals. Every infrastructure upgrade should directly align with and help accomplish organizational strategies based on trends, emerging needs, expansion plans, customer expectations, production realities, and related considerations.

Major overhauls should be postponed until leadership has a unified vision for both immediate and future priorities. Blindly adopting new technologies is unlikely to help companies without a clear strategic direction.

Assess Workflows First

Too often, companies scramble to implement innovative solutions before fully analyzing existing processes and identifying true bottlenecks and pain points. Legacy infrastructure frequently gets scapegoated when poor workflows and outdated policies hamper productivity the most.

Take time to map out all systems and their interconnectivity end-to-end, including gathering user feedback concerning roadblocks. Determine what clumsy business processes or leadership gaps truly drive inefficiencies versus simply aged equipment. This prevents pouring money into unnecessary upgrades that do not alleviate foundational problems. The best change strategies fix flawed workflows before addressing technology gaps.

Build vs Buy Evaluation

Once leaders detail strategic goals and workflow obstacles, exploring technical options emerges as the next step. Assembling solutions comprises a combination of building custom elements while integrating suitable third-party applications for other needs. The build versus buy assessment means examining costs, control, capabilities, and convenience for each component.

Generally, specialty software and unique features warrant custom software development, even if it involves initial sticker shock compared to off-the-shelf alternatives. According to the folk at Modest, critical systems tying heavily into proprietary data and legacy infrastructure often necessitate internal creation. On the flip side, common platforms like email, office tools, mobile access, and basic storage typically get licensing through vendors.

For companies without the specialized technical skills, consultants offer valuable guidance on business requirements, software development, and the complex customizations needed for core infrastructure modernization. Effective project management, coordinating internal stakeholders, external vendors, deadlines, and budgets, is critical.

Prioritize Seamless Integration

Too many technology projects get narrowly scoped around stand-alone tools incapable of interfacing with other business systems downstream. This repetitive “rip and replace” approach constantly requires users learning new platforms that fail sharing critical data.

Smart infrastructure evolution demands focus on seamless integration between old and new systems. Prioritize data migration, API connections, single sign-on access, user permission mirroring, and supportive integrations when evaluating replacement solutions. The objective becomes unified infrastructure versus fragmented toolsets requiring ongoing manual intervention.

Phase Rollouts and Testing Carefully

Significant system changes, regardless of planning, often result in unexpected disruption and reduced productivity. Savvy executives stage technology rollouts using phased piloting. This approach helps identify and fix bugs early, and address adoption challenges on a smaller scale before a full company rollout.

The plan should include multi-month testing cycles to integrate feedback between organizational rollouts. Patience gets rewarded over the long run by prioritizing quality assurance over rushing ambitious modernization efforts. Phasing appropriately buffers business operations from the inevitable hiccups arising during complex technology transitions.

Conclusion

Struggling with outdated or inefficient legacy systems eventually reaches a breaking point at most companies. Business leaders must resist reactionary decisions by first revisiting strategic planning, analyzing flawed processes, auditing required capabilities, and mapping integration needs. Custom software development guided by specific goals, phased testing, and seamless data unification prevent creating more pitfalls. Undertaking careful preparation surrounding upgrading core infrastructure protects companies from unnecessary disruptions.