It’s easy to overlook the importance and advantages of modernizing your custom web applications. Whether it’s for a website or an application that runs your entire business, keeping your systems up-to-date is vital to running an efficient business, staying a step ahead of the competition, and protecting sensitive data.
Your custom software application is likely a central part of your revenue streams, logistics, and operations. These systems often integrate with other applications, including internal solutions (sales, marketing, communications, billing, support, etc.) and external applications (suppliers, vendors, customers, etc.). When custom software is that central to a business’s operations, keeping it updated and modern is extremely important.
As you can imagine, allowing your software to become outdated can cause unwanted performance issues, including becoming slow or buggy, opening up security vulnerabilities, and creating unreliable data.
Your focus is on boosting business performance, finding and retaining new customers, and creating efficiency. One of the best and most proven ways to do that is by ensuring that your custom software systems are regularly modernized.
Here are some of the top benefits of application modernization:
Your customers look to your business to create a unique and positive experience in doing business with you. That experience covers many areas of your business, from initial sales to final billing. In between, your customers expect regular communication and updates, as well as a smooth delivery of your goods and services.
Outdated software can derail the entire buyer's experience for your customers. By modernizing your software, you can keep up with their expectations in terms of interacting with your business. That will create loyalty, which in turn will increase new customer retention.
We just happen to have two great examples from our own application management projects.
Eight years ago, we took over maintenance for an existing custom application. The system had some design issues which resulted in data problems. We migrated it to a modern application framework. As a result, we created enterprise-grade stability and implemented workflow management that maintained that data integrity. Now, the business operates more efficiently, securely, and has stayed modernized.
An outdated website can affect more than just your brand. There comes a point where it becomes a security vulnerability. This example is a website that was built in 2015 and kept its branding and design updated. But the time came to modernize the technology. This became an issue because the client opted out of a regular maintenance plan. We got to the point that some of the underlying technology was reaching “end of life”, and something needed to be done before a catastrophe hit. So, we ended up rebuilding the technology platform and the website. This is a great example of how website modernization could -- and should -- be a continual process.
Whether your custom software is starting to show signs of becoming outdated, you’re concerned with compliance like CCPA or GDPR, or you just want to stay a few bounds ahead of your closest competitors, let’s set up a time to review your software and see how modernizing it will help you achieve your business performance goals.
Contact us today to start the conversation.