When it comes to the process of migrating old ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software systems to newer versions, the task is often postponed as it is thought to be too costly, or the process is perceived as being long-winded and difficult to execute.
However, the risk of maintaining these legacy systems can be extremely high and your business can run into multiple problems if a system migration doesn’t happen.
These systems are often unable to effectively meet the daily demands that are expected of a business today, which means that you’re likely paying for an ERP software that is limiting your productivity, when it should be maximising it.
There are also other potential risks you could encounter when running a legacy ERP system if you’ve not experienced them already. The top 4 most serious risks are as follows:
1. Little Agility
Nowadays, businesses must expect constant disruption in their industry and be agile enough to remain competitive throughout these constant changes. Agility is no longer a defining characteristic of a successful business but a basic requirement to be able to survive.
Legacy ERP systems often require users to interact with several other backend systems in order to extract the relevant data needed for analysis. Not only is this time-consuming, but it can also be difficult to extract information in and out of different systems to create a comprehensive and consumable report of relevant metrics.
More modern versions of ERP solutions can produce relevant metrics and data, due to its ability to easily integrate with other applications. Because of this, users can access any information they desire from one platform and produce digestible reports that show relevant and insightful findings to upper management, within a desired timeframe.
2. Lack of Support
If you continue to operate with legacy ERP, your technical support can quickly dry up. It is often the case that when software vendors begin the rollout of new solutions with modified features, they reduce their support capabilities for older solutions in favour of newer versions with more pressing issues.
Even if this support does not vanish altogether, it can likely become extremely costly.
Continuing to support an outdated ERP system can make it difficult for problems to be resolved in a timely manner, which in turn can put a complete halt on your employee’s business productivity.
3. Slow Application Integration
Even if you aren’t keen on putting your business through a complete digital transformation, having the ability to integrate your ERP system with other useful applications in your business is still valuable.
As already mentioned in our earlier points, this can be much harder to achieve when using a legacy ERP system. Many of these systems simply do not feature an API (Application Programming Interface) to be able to integrate different applications like more modern systems can.
Businesses have witnessed this more recently when attempting to install Microsoft updates onto older software. This has resulted in various internal issues for businesses and brought light to the value in having modern ERP solutions.
4. Lack of Data
The data that can be generated by your ERP solution can be extremely valuable to your business. It can help you to gain a better insight into your business, identify current trends and look at past data too, all of which can help to inform your future strategy.
Although this data extraction is possible with legacy ERP, it can be difficult. Some legacy ERP systems make the process of finding relevant metrics hard and time-consuming, and further do not have the ability to manipulate this data into easily understood reports.
With more modern forms of ERP software, solutions such as built-in data analytics, reporting and data visualisation tools are all standard features that you can use.
Transitioning from Legacy to Modern ERP Software
Whilst you may have grown comfortable with your existing ERP solution, the reality today is that transitioning from a legacy ERP to a modern ERP system is a much better option.
At DCS, we are able to bring you the latest modern ERP software from Intact.
This integrated system offers centralised data all in one place, allowing you to manage all business processes from one place.
Intact is highly configurable, which comes as standard, which allows the user to be able to add any required fields and change the layout to work more efficiently for your business needs. With Intact’s automation functionality, it helps to ease the pain of those timely, manual tasks such as scheduled reporting, workflow and automated letters.
This eliminates the need for your business to use multiple systems and can drastically improve the quality of your businesses workflow. Intact software caters its services towards various industries and service jobs to ensure your software’s capabilities are fit for purpose.
Some of these industries include:
- Intact Engineering Software
- Supply Chain Management
- Warehouse Management
- Intact Distribution Software
Other Intact services can be found here.
If you’d like to talk to us about how we can help with your upgrade to a new ERP system, please call us on 01937 541411, or email us at [email protected].