Modernized IT systems enable organizations to remain competitive and future-ready. However, planning your IT modernization requires you to understand the elements of your existing IT environment and create a plan that fits your organization and delivers maximum value to your investors and stakeholders. Legacy system modernization companies are the best bet for achieving this digital transformation.
Prioritize Your Customers
When modernizing your IT infrastructure, focus on how you can provide higher and better value to your end customers. This can be through improved product quality, user experience, or overall operating efficiencies. To this end, develop a business case and outline the innovation and value you expect to achieve through your IT modernization plan. Remember to touch on all important value aspects for your customers.
In addition to this, you would want to put the right tracking metrics in place to keep you updated on the plan’s progress. These metrics include sales, recruiting, user experience, productivity, and customer retention.
By leveraging managed IT staffing services, you can put together a cross-functional team. This must have IT, R&D, operations, strategy, and customer interaction professionals. Together they can create a well-rounded IT modernization strategy for your organization.
Modernize Your Data
A modern database can set you up for success in today’s modern environment. It can help you obtain on-demand insights to fuel your AI programs. A Gartner’s report reveals that over 75% of databases will be transferred to the cloud. The data is estimated to increase to 175 ZB by 2025, recording a sharp growth of 61% in the next three years.
Cloud data transfer can help you extract more value and insights to drive innovations. However, remember to plan to reduce potential risks associated with cloud management of data, like high costs, data complexity, risk of data corruption, and other unknown cloud risks.
As a result, you will be able to better deal with the challenges of an unplanned migration and streamline the process of operating in a new cloud environment.
Modernize Your Application
Businesses are required to constantly evolve and ensure agility in operations and high value across deliverables. The supply aspect deals with unsupportive platforms, technical debt issues, and old technology. At the same time, businesses organize efficient digital upgrades that take reduced costs, risks, and time.
All these areas can be effectively addressed and resolved through application modernization, wherein your legacy applications are transformed to better fit into your scalable and agile business environment. Depending on your business’s end goal, you can choose to rebuild, replace, rehost, re-architect, or refactor your core applications.
Hiring the right IT-managed services company for your application modernization project is important to ensure that you receive maximum business value. Moving your complex applications to the cloud can be challenging as they are often incompatible with advanced tools and technologies. Your IT services company can help you easily navigate and overcome these challenges.
Modernize Your Workplace
A modern workplace is the easiest way to gain a competitive edge in the market. Proper workplace modernization can involve transferring databases to cloud tools, upgrading systems like SharePoint, and developing agile applications.
You would also want to rethink your enterprise documents that might be stored in multiple applications and devices, like File Shares, Google Drive, and SharePoint. An IT services company can help you carefully decide what documents are best kept on a cloud platform and which ones should be removed or archived.
Create Designs Focused on Speed and Flexibility
To stay relevant in the market, businesses must continuously improve their offerings. To that end, your applications must be flexible enough to keep up with this pace of ever-changing demand. Unlike outdated IT systems that focus only on one or two activities, modern systems are highly flexible and let you access multiple functions swiftly.
Using a minimum viable product (MVP) approach, you can evaluate your current IT systems to identify what all features are important for their value and working. You can release this MVP to a small group, ask for feedback and responses, and even understand their actions to better understand the most valuable features for your customers and employees.
The best bet is to design systems powered by machine learning and AI technologies. As these systems adapt and evolve by learning the habits of customers and employees, they can result in greater speed and flexibility.
Ensure Active Employee Engage
IT modernization also involves supporting and empowering employees to embrace technological changes in the business. You must consider your company culture when creating your new IT systems and solutions, as an IT architecture can often demand a culture shift.
To ensure a smooth transition, reach out to your employees to understand their data analysis techniques for the stored data. This information will enable you to decide what training and support your employees need.
Also, ensure optimal engagement of employees who will use the new technology. You can involve chosen professionals from every department who will actively participate in this digital transformation era.
Be Agile
Most IT services companies will suggest that you make your IT modernization process to be a smooth transition. The whole process can be divided into different delivery increments. This way, you can introduce upgraded functions into the business as soon as they are ready. As you progress along the roadmap, you can also seek user feedback to improve your products.
Make sure to remain user-centric when choosing agility and be mindful of the responses you receive from your customers and employees, as these will help you further improve products and IT infrastructure.
Invest in Resources That Support Your Business
When aiming for a successful IT modernization, the following areas must be considered:
- Analyze your diverse resources, create a project management plan, and build a team of professionals passionate about trying new technologies.
- Allocate funds in important areas of your IT modernization and be sure of the areas where it’s not lucrative to invest.
- Work with more than one vendor providing managed IT services. Start by choosing easy-to-integrate technologies that work with your current systems and technologies.
- Consider retiring your outdated systems. Make sure to invest in your employees’ development and learning so they can efficiently work with new IT systems.
Wrapping Up
A well-planned IT modernization involves methodologies that dictate the right flow of application development within an organization. They provide a catalyst for taking the business towards a thriving future where prompt and timely technology upgrades maximize the value of your IT environment, company culture, and the business.
VLink’s experienced software engineer teams provide legacy app modernization services to help business plan, organize, and execute a partial, all-encompassing, or urgent IT modernization. The team can work with you on various outsourcing and IT staffing contract engagement models with the right tools and skills to modernize legacy systems and enhance the time-to-value proportion. Reach out to us for a quote today.
