What is the cost of using outdated business software?

Business Software Behaviour

In the western world, organizations modernize their ERP and CRM business software solutions every 8 to 10 years. That is either an upgrade or a complete replacement. In some industries, this number tends to increase due to the current crisis. But also due to the fact that many organizations postpone these projects – even if they actually have to act.

So why do companies postpone the modernization of their business software in the first place? Well, there are various reasons!

• Who is to blame that the old solution doesn’t fit anymore?
• Complexity and effort of replacing what you have.
• The fear of the upgrade being a failure and how that impacts the individual careers.
• Spending money on something that you “already have”.

The Impact of Out-Dated Systems

An important question you should be considering is “What is the potential business impact of this delay?” While the list of consequences is a long one, we’ve selected a number of issues that can have a serious material impact on your business: 

• Maintaining the current high Cost of Ownership (TCO) that unavoidably belongs to the deployment of on-premise software solutions based on your own server hardware and the internal system management
• The cost of your current poor or broken business processes will continue. And go up even further if you don’t fix it shortly. This can result in a decrease of customer and employee satisfaction. And eventually in the loss of customers and the departure of employees
• For your current manual processes, a delayed modernization makes you dependent on the brains of your senior employees who will leave your company shortly when they retire
• Perhaps the most important issue: missing out on the ongoing innovation that we see in the cloud-based solutions these days. All leading ERP/CRM vendors have moved their R&D investments to their cloud products. So, if you still run on-premise solutions, this means that the availability of new functionality and innovation will slow down. And eventually stop.

Modernizing your business software demands for a serious investment. But continuing the use of outdated solutions can potentially cost you a fortune!

Digital Transformation – Implementing a Modern ERP

Are you considering modernising your business? Digital transformation is more than a buzz word – it is now a necessity. Computers have come a long way in the last 25 years! Around the turn of the century, digital transformation meant some of your staff having PC's, however things are a somewhat more advanced now. It is important to have a strategy for transforming your business using digital technology.

Will McIntee is the UK Lead for Quattro Business Solutions (QBS Group), the Master VAR for the UK Dynamics ERP channel. In this video he talks about how things have changed with regard to accessibility to technology, and how to think about digital transformation in your business.