What is your outdated software potentially costing you?

Why would a company keep bloated and outdated legacy software that could potentially cost them millions? One of the reasons is the fear and risk of disrupting their business, a valid concern, no doubt.

Change is difficult and leadership may feel that a change will inspire resistance. Employees often become comfortable and familiar and feel threatened by the level of potential training involved in a new system.

Companies may also view the old system as being heavily customised and a move to a newer system as being too complex an undertaking. From a financial perspective, upgrading to a new software system typically requires a large capital investment and although they may understand the long-term advantages that come with modern software systems, businesses may still choose to prioritise short-term goals.

Another concern is often around regulatory compliance and the legal risks involved in a transition may cause them to delay exploring newer systems.

Most of these concerns seem legitimate but could not be further from the truth. And often, the benefits outweigh the perceived risk. The potential in increased profits, or, money saving (equating to the same thing) are numerous and some of the reasons for this are discussed below.

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Benefit from New Features

Software updates provide more than just security updates, they often offer new and improved features and speed enhancements to make the end-user experience better. Studies indicate that businesses that regularly upgrade their software experience up to 30% improvement in application performance.

Happier staff and customers

Outdated and ineffective systems and software can hamper how people work with or for an organisation, causing frustration. Out-of-date technology gives your business the reputation of being behind the times. Instead, investing in technology offers your customers a better experience and gives staff a chance to increase productivity and efficiency.

Increased connectivity

Upgrades in software can improve connectivity by linking systems, automating key functions, and boosting responsiveness. This can lead to better demand forecasting, precise inventory management, increases in efficiency and opportunities both for cost reduction and production.

Improving process efficiency

Software vendors are continuously enhancing current products with new features and functionality in order to improve productivity and make the product easier to use. This increases the return on technology investments.

Increased cyber protection and overall security.

Old and outdated software is vulnerable to hackers and cyber criminals. If a threat actor gets in through a software security flaw, they will search for personal data such as financial information, passwords, usernames or other documents with sensitive information. Threat actors see these vulnerabilities as open doors, enabling them to plant malware on people's systems. Malware enables threat actors to take control of computers and steal information. Malware can also encrypt files, documents and other programs so they are unusable. Security patches block these open doors in the software to protect a device from attacks.

Upgrading systems sounds expensive, however, the truth is that older systems have more issues – and consequently more costs. The cost of disruption caused by unstable systems and software can very quickly escalate to more than it would cost to invest in an upgraded system.

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How do you know you are ready for a new system?

Your Software Is No Longer Supported. Unsupported software becomes vulnerable to security breaches, and cybercriminals are quick to exploit these gaps.

Slower Performance Across the Board. Older versions are often less efficient and might be full of bugs that haven’t been patched.

Security Alerts Are Becoming a Regular Occurrence. Cybercriminals thrive on exploiting vulnerabilities in outdated software.

You’re Missing Out on New Features Are you hearing about new features you don’t have? That’s another clue that your software is behind. Staying up to date not only ensures security but also helps your business stay competitive by leveraging the latest tools available.

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Technology is moving fast and organisations that can take advantage of new technologies quickly have a significant competitive advantage. By running the latest version of a piece of software, organisations make it easier to adopt new technologies like, for example, the Internet of things, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Staying in line with current versions means the organisation can access all-important integration points, as well as all the other benefits.

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