To be ready for the future, work on legacy systems

For most of their existence, we have taken them for granted, not paying much attention to them, but more and more, they are facing a serious issue: They are coming of age. Serious age. A few decades after the invention of the internet, technology keeps evolving at an increasing rate, and while we happily build more creative and radical brand-new products, the systems we use to run our businesses lag behind. Sooner or later, this disconnect leads to severe problems, but why does it happen in the first place? 

“It is hard to excite highly skilled individuals for this kind of work. It’s just not that prestigious.”

I once talked to the head of UX at a global broadcasting company. Her mission was to assemble and lead a team of designers to modernize internally used software. One of her problems was that she couldn’t find enough great designers to work in her team. She said: “It is hard to excite highly skilled individuals for this kind of work. It’s just not that prestigious.” Another challenge for hers is getting internal buy-in and cooperation from management who often don’t see the value in her work, as creating more user-friendly administrative software doesn’t generate an immediate revenue stream. This sort of short-termist thinking and lack of investment has been crippling economies on all fronts. Your own organization though is the one place where you may be able to do something about it. 

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1. First, outdated and cumbersome systems drain resources. Just think about a store assistant operating a cumbersome Point of Sale (POS) system. If the software is less self-explanatory, you have to spend more on staff training. Even worse, if it takes them longer to operate, you may lose customers who are tired of waiting or have to provide additional staff and tills to make up for delays.

2. Secondly, it is bad for your brand. Customers, in the above scenario, may or may not notice, but your staff will. This is true also back at the office: Who hasn’t seen their colleagues throw their hands in the air with a loud sigh while letting themselves fall back deep into their chair and uttering ‘Hugh?! COME ON!’, or ‘Are you kidding?!’, or ‘Not again!’” You can’t underestimate the cumulative effects of these daily frustrations. They suck the motivation out of employees and produce a culture of anti-innovation. After all, why should employees care about improving things, when they are not feeling supported themselves. Which brings me to my last point:

3. Old systems become the biggest hindrance to innovation. I have seen many ambitious and genuinely awesome projects fail over the years. Many factors come together to make or break a digital innovation project, but by far the biggest impact I’ve seen came from systems which have aged beyond salvation. Always jumping on the latest tech surely is not sustainable either, but leave things age too long, and there comes a point where the overhaul becomes unmanageable. 

Often the greatest opportunities lie in underappreciated areas. If you are managing a business, or someone working in tech looking for their next role, consider giving enterprise solutions and legacy architectures some love. They may not be sexy and allow you to show off at parties (although some examples show that they can be), but done right, they can generate some serious impact, for businesses and people, financially and emotionally.