There are many options when it comes to dealing with legacy software and the right approach will depend on several business and technical factors.
Our health check service provides a high-level review of your legacy software, working with you to understand its functionality, architecture and potential risks or limitations. This is followed up with a briefing where we run through your modernisation options.
Depending upon your business, our legacy system health check may cover some of the following areas:
Business
- What was the original purpose of the system?
- Is the original purpose still valid?
- Is the system still meeting the original objectives?
- Do you foresee any changes in your business that the system must adapt to?
- Are there any business opportunities you can’t take advantage of due to system limitations?
Support and Security
- Who supports the system for you and how responsive are they?
- Is your vendor still updating the system or providing security patches?
- How many people in your organisation have a good level of familiarity with the system?
- How much are you paying for support, maintenance, and downtime when the system has a problem, and how often does this occur?
- Do you have a key man risk?
Technical
- What programming language was your legacy system written in?
- What data does your system hold?
- Are you maximising the data that it does hold?
- Do you have system documentation?
- How does the system perform?
- Does the system integrate with any other systems?
- Does the system give you adequate reporting functionality?
- Does the system offer a good user experience?
- Can the system be extended to meet competition?
- Does the system require high levels of maintenance?
Wider Considerations
- What does your team say about the legacy system?
- What is the learning curve for new staff into the business for using the system?
- Are there other hidden costs such as staff morale, loss of talent, and general frustration?
- How do you think the system compares with similar systems used by competitors?
Helping you maximise the value of your existing systems
Legacy systems are often very complex, touching many different aspects of an organisation’s business. The answers to these questions and more will help break through the complexity and provide some valuable insight. We might propose that you replace your legacy systems with more up to date technology platforms but this often comes with significant risk and higher risk leads to higher costs. Alternatively, we might propose that you consider the viability of upgrading these systems using new digital technologies. This approach helps realise the inherent value these platforms deliver to a business whilst at the time upgrading them to benefit from new digital capabilities. Our legacy health check service gives you all of this insight, for free!
The time required to complete the health check and the amount of your time that we will require depends upon the scale and nature of your legacy systems. Contact us for an informal chat to find out more.
