Legacy software systems are an issue for business today. They cannot talk to newer more intelligent systems, they cant be reported on and they can’t be centrally managed. But to ‘rip and replace’ would be expensive, complicated and in most cases, far too much hassle.
What is Legacy Software?
For those of you that don’t know, a legacy system is a piece of software that is based on an old computer system or application. But, these systems are still commonplace in business today. Particularly in Manufacturing and construction.
Why do we still have legacy software in 2020?
It is very simple, for a lot of businesses, they are still running a lot of day to day business functions as for that reason, and cost, they will remain as part of your IT systems for many years to come. In the main, the risk to the business and operational efficiency is far too severe to replace.
What are the main problems of Legacy software?
- Legacy software systems are not prepared for change
- Because they are outdated there are no security updates
- Because a lot of them are written in proprietary code, they cannot be changed, updated or modified
- Not cost-effective to manage
- No integration with modern cloud-based systems
Some of the challenges for upgrading to modern systems
- For those businesses that are using legacy software, it can be hard to change and a lot of the time the answer to the question of upgrading is ‘it is still working, and too much hassle a cost to change.
- Users are comfortable using something they have used for years.
- The workflows have been in place for years and are bespoke to that business and to change will be difficult
- Some are very dependant upon other systems and if you change one, you may break another. Particularly when the developers may not be around to help out
- Investment is a big issue as you will not always know how much it will cost to swap out an old system
- Downtime could be a big issue, especially if you break something along the way
- When it comes to cost, it can be difficult to see a return on investment. Especially in the short term.
- Choice of what to replace a legacy system with can be a major challenge and it may be hard to find a modern software solution that will cover all eventualities.
So how can Unleashed help?
We do things in a measured way, we don’t advocate the removal of your legacy system until the time is right. What we do it create a way to get the data from your old system and put it into the new system. We only work with workflows you are currently using and are not concerned with any other part of the system. All we need is the data. Once the data has been migrated, we can then gradually decommission the old system and move you to the new system. In this case, we recommend a Workflow automation platform called Kissflow.
Kissflow is a no-code workflow automation platform. This means we can take data from a legacy system and build a workflow and move your data into Kissflow. Once data is in Kissflow you have all sorts of benefits. You can add authorisation steps into the workflow. You can then report on this data, which means that all of a sudden, you have genuine up to the minute business information. You can see at a glance where each flow is within a process. All this is business gold.
Is this an easy process?
I would be telling you lies if I said this was all painless. But it can be pretty seamless, the hard thing for you, and us, is to understand the existing process. Once we know that, a new workflow can be created in Kissflow in minutes and be up and working within hours. And, from a user perspective, Kissflow is intuitive so end-user training is a few hours rather than many days.
The biggest selling point
Kissflow is very cost-effective, you will not be spending tens of thousands of pounds on this solution. It is licenced per user per month and you can have as many workflows for one monthly cost. In fact, once you get up and running with the first workflow, you can do the rest yourself if you have someone within the business who has some excel knowledge.
If you would like to know more, get in touch.
