For many business managers, the simplest and easiest way to ensure success may be to stick to the tried-and-tested methods of doing things, including strategic planning to day-to-day activities. This approach requires minimal effort and allows them to stay firmly in their comfort zone – as well as within budget.
The radical changes in the organizations created by the software modernization program often result in fear, uncertainty, and suspicion. And, this can be counterproductive, as people can resist taking risks and spend time, money, and resources preferring to continue with traditional practices.
This also happens because people have so many doubts about application modernization. In this blog, we have answered all such doubts. And, if you need to partner for application modernization, we would be happy to help you. Let’s get started.
Application Modernization
In our previous blogs, we have written about the meaning of application modernization.
In the demand side of the business landscape, pressure is continually mounting to meet the continuously changing market needs. And, on the supply side, digital transformation requires attention to technical debt issues, outdated technology, and unsupported platforms while minimizing time, cost, and risk.
Solution?
Application modernization. Update old applications and fit them in a flexible and scalable environment. Depending on the different business needs, organizations may change their applications to focus on rehosting, refactoring, or innovation.
Although application modernization has compelling business values fears of handling complex legacy applications or dependence on the cloud, budget problems, the need to balance stability and performance, and resistance to new technologies create obstacles for organizations and inadvertently hinder their growth.
This resistance can reduce the potential success of your modernization project by increasing the time and cost of implementing and adopting new systems. An essential part of reducing this is learning a framework for specific arguments and responses against modernization that will increase the value of change in the situation.
Also, it is essential to find the right partner who can guide you through the comprehensive application update process, provide you with the right tools and techniques, create an effective roadmap, and help you plan, build, deploy, and improve your mission-critical applications.
Before finding a reliable partner, let’s look at some myths the organizations have about application modernization. Here are some common misconceptions about modernizing your app and why changing might be the safest option for you:
1. My IT Infrastructure and Systems are Just as Good
Many companies have been using the same enterprise system for many years or decades. Although these systems may perform well in the current environment, as technological advances are increasing rapidly, the organization needs to adapt to the competition – or risk failure.
Sometimes the choice to transform your organization is not based on how successful you think it is but on how successful you want it to be. Keep this in mind when evaluating existing infrastructure and looking at how it can be improved to meet the organization’s changing needs to overcome this mentality.
2. Updating an Application will Take a lot of Money and Time
This is a common perception and is often supported by a list of other projects and activities that a person finds most valuable.
While you are updating your application architecture, business processes and workflows can go into downtime or come to a screeching halt which can be expensive and time-consuming in the short term. Still, it is a necessary step in enabling the continued success of your organization.
Instead of thinking of it as an expense, remember that modernization is an investment that will save time and money in the future. Modernization is an opportunity to simplify inefficient processes, enabling employees to perform their tasks more efficiently and often more pleasantly.
This update may include agile best practices that are especially useful for legacy systems. And modernizing the existing projects is an effective way to overcome resistance.
3. Changing the Management Structures of Business will destroy Existing Structures
One of the most common concerns of middle management and business unit leaders is that modernization might eat into the success of their previous careers. Employees may be uncertain about their future and their roles after the update.
This fear can manifest itself in various passive and active behaviors, from open resistance to trying to use modernization as a tool to save old work tasks and abandoned processes.
When modernization is closely linked to organizational change, it is essential to consider who negatively views the change. Recognizing individuals’ fears and treating them with respect when dealing with uncertainty will help reduce the stress of unplanned change.
One approach is to encourage managers, leaders, and employees to become part of a “community of change” or functional workgroups where they can frequently contribute and collaborate to modernize the organization.
This can be an effective way to reshape your business practices, as well as help, engage your employees in company-wide goals and objectives. This could be an opportunity to discover and identify potential innovations from your existing business processes.
4. Setting Strict Plans for Future Operations Limits Flexibility
The practice of modernization involves careful planning, budgeting, and implementation, but the thought that it limits the workflow and flexibility of operations is outdated.
Creating achievable plans for your organization’s future allows leaders to set clear goals, monitor successes, and failures, and ensure that your organization continues to grow.
It is important to ensure that your modernization program follows the steps to effectively engage stakeholders and employees as part of an enterprise-wide effort. This will help ensure that working leaders, managers, and employees are individually committed to success.
Most importantly, a streamlined plan will allow you to adapt to your situation and changes in the industry, no matter how serious, because you will be able to evaluate the impact of priorities on changing needs and policy.
Choosing to transform your application through enterprise modernization is indeed a difficult task, and internal resistance can make this task even more difficult.
Being clear about your objectives, establishing the need for modernization at all levels of the organization, changing the internal mindset to accept change, and engaging leaders, managers, and employees to understand their role and opportunities in the future of the organization can all help reduce the friction around the general understanding of modernization.
The Secret to Avoid Application Modernization Pitfalls
“Failing to prepare, preparing to fail?” Remember this saying.
Well, this is especially true when it comes to updating and migrating IT infrastructure. Be it data migration, Office 365 migration, or migration of applications, go for any unplanned migration, and you will be guaranteed to face unwanted business interruptions, which will cause you to lose not only revenue but also data and reputation.
The way out is to consult an expert before you take a leap. Integrative Systems is a Microsoft-certified partner that has transformed more than 100+ reputable organizations globally. With over 20 years of experience in accelerating enterprise-wide digital transformation, Integrative Systems is playing a key role in the modernization of legacy applications.
If you are also looking for a software application modernization partner, feel free to connect with us. Send us an email at [email protected], and someone from our team will connect with you in 1-2 business days.
