Legacy systems: Every business has them, every business leader wants to get rid of them, yet often, no one seems to know what to do about them. But as with other strategy-level tech issues – from cloud migration to digital transformation – legacy systems mean different things to different organizations.
It helps to start by understanding what a legacy system is – and isn’t. A legacy system isn’t necessarily a mainframe computer or an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system running in a ‘90s-era datacenter. Rather, a legacy system is any technology that no longer meets your business needs.
For instance, while cloud adoption has generated more than $1 trillion in value for the Fortune 500, early cloud implementations are already aging to legacy status for some companies. From older personal productivity suites to project management tools designed for yesterday’s work styles, legacy systems will constantly appear across your enterprise.
The good news is that modernizing your legacy systems needn’t be a disruptive, make-or-break business proposition. In fact, an effective no-code application development platform can enable your business to modernize your tech stack quickly, cost-effectively, and continually.
Up-level Your Legacy Software
Organizations hold onto legacy systems for a lot of reasons – including the cost of new solutions, the difficulty of integrations, and user resistance. Sometimes the capital expense, time, and complexity of ripping and replacing legacy systems tip the cost-benefit analysis in favor of extending existing IT investments.
Trouble is, legacy systems can cost your enterprise plenty – and hold you back from more effective ways of working. Workers spend an average of 520 hours a year – more than one day of work each week – on mundane tasks that could be automated, according to CIO Insights. Based on a national average wage of just over $25 an hour, that could cost your business more than $13,000 per employee each year.
An effective no-code platform offers a proven, cost-effect solution. A no-code tool enables your teams to augment and even replace legacy software with sophisticated web forms, web applications, and workflow apps. You can quickly and easily automate routine tasks, rid your workflows of manual bottlenecks, and implement new internal and customer-facing functionality.
With a no-code app builder, any employee can design, build, and implement new applications and workflows – all without writing a single line of code. Users just drag and drop software components and workflow steps from a prebuilt library. They assemble those features in a graphical environment to create secure interfaces, forms, data inputs, and outputs – even entire new processes.
Just as significant, no-code lets you modernize your tech stack without expensive, hard-to-recruit software developers. “Low-code/no-code (LCNC) applications can provide a close fit to business requirements, can be implemented quickly, and typically cost much less than systems developed in-house,” Harvard Business Review reports. It’s no wonder 70% of applications developed by businesses will be created with LCNC tools by 2025, according to Gartner.
No-code Modernization in the Real World
Ready to turbocharge your tech stack out of legacy status with no-code? Here are five ideas for process modernization based on real-world success stories:
1. Create company-wide webforms. The University of Portland lacked centralized software for creating online forms for use across campus. It deployed no-code to empower various departments to create their own forms while ensuring institution-wide consistency. No-code also enables centralized capture of form data while maintaining data reporting standards.
2. Automate internal processes.Ogden Clinic, a 25-site healthcare system in the western United States, was unable to automate key internal processes with its existing systems. The organization turned to no-code to digitize 30 internal processes and integrate them with legacy system databases. No-code can even maintain an audit trail to ensure regulatory compliance.
3. Accelerate operations.Madison National Life Insurance struggled with systems that couldn’t automate all steps for client applications. The company used no-code to digitize the policy application process and accelerate operations. A smart form now auto-fills key data, and a routing process automatically enters the data into the company’s existing systems. API interfaces render the forms in legacy file types.
4. Manage process performance. Trilliant, which provides utility metering and communications, couldn’t achieve effective process management with its existing systems. The company’s line-of-business teams leveraged no-code to document workflow steps, identify interaction points, map new processes, and remove bottlenecks. No-code has enabled the enterprise to improve processes and optimize resources.
5. Maintain compliance. The State of Oregon’s Office of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman manages quality of care for 2,500 nursing and assisted-living facilities. It must meet strict state and federal compliance requirements. But its existing systems couldn’t generate the reports it needed. The agency used no-code to accelerate data capture, reduce manual errors, and generate fast accurate reports. The reports also give employees insights into trending issues, investigator workload, open cases, and more.
Legacy systems are a fact of business for all organizations. But they needn’t hold back your enterprise from operating more efficiently and serving customers better. With an effective no-code platform, you can modernize your tech stack, digitize your workflows, and win in the marketplace.
