Cost of outdated business software

What is the cost of using outdated business software?

All around the world, countless organizations use old, non-integrated, user-unfriendly and/or outdated software solutions to run their businesses. Unavoidably, this leads to inefficiencies in today’s fast changing world with demanding and impatient customers. If this is also relevant for your organization, then this probably is no news for you. For sure, you are aware of the availability of better solutions. But for some reason, you were not ready to act yet. While you are waiting, do you have any idea what the cost is of using those outdated business software solutions?

In the western world, organizations modernize their ERP and CRM 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.

Is it worth postponing software modernization?

So why do companies postpone the modernization of their business software in the first place? Well, there are various reasons! Varying from the questions who’s to blame that the old solutions doesn’t fit anymore. And looking up to the complexity and the effort of the replacement. To the fear of damaging individual curriculum vitae’s in case of project failure.

An important question is what the potential business impact of this delay is. 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.

Main consequences of not modernizing

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’re a fortune!

Author

Guus Krabbenborg – co-founder and co-owner of QBS Group, the successful Value Add SMB Distributor for Dynamics partners in the EMEA region. He also started a new company “Dynamics and More”. This company supports Microsoft Dynamics customers and partners.

Guus Krabbenborg is a highly-experienced business trainer and consultant with a well-earned reputation in the international Microsoft Dynamics arena. He is a frequent speaker at various Microsoft events. His approach is perceived by both customers and partners as inspiring, creative and provocative – but always entertaining.