Tackling legacy systems

Lega­cy ini­tia­tives are often one of the most com­mon and ear­ly hur­dles a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion endeav­our can face.

Some­where in the organ­i­sa­tion, a well-inten­tioned team will stum­ble upon some tech that could help them work bet­ter, smarter or faster. Or an exec­u­tive, frus­trat­ed with inef­fi­cien­cies or per­ceived out­dat­ed ways of work­ing, will set about try­ing to do some­thing about it.

Often these actions will go on under the radar as peo­ple side-step the trea­cle of cor­po­rate process and bureau­cra­cy. After all, why not? Sys­tems imple­men­ta­tion isn’t what it once was, with new cloud-based tools active with­in min­utes and on flex­i­ble pric­ing plans eas­i­ly accom­mo­dat­ed by most depart­men­tal dis­cre­tionary bud­gets.

The start­ing point is ensur­ing a com­mon def­i­n­i­tion of the busi­ness prob­lem or oppor­tu­ni­ty which the trans­for­ma­tion is designed to tack­le

Why should these pro­gres­sive indi­vid­u­als sit and wait for a wider trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme to solve their prob­lems or for the wider organ­i­sa­tion to bring its oil-tanker-esque pace to deci­sion-mak­ing? The ben­e­fit to their teams can be imme­di­ate.

While com­mon­place, these aren’t actions of mal­ice or mutiny. Oppor­tunism? Per­haps. Frus­tra­tion? Often. Under­stand­able? Usu­al­ly. As the say­ing goes, nature abhors a vac­u­um.

Company-wide transformation

Then along comes the pan-organ­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion endeav­our. A busi­ness recog­nis­es the need or oppor­tu­ni­ty for change at the most senior lev­el. It sets out its ambi­tions to lever­age dig­i­tal tools and tech­nol­o­gy to trans­form how it oper­ates, promis­ing val­ue through both effi­cien­cies and effec­tive­ness across the enter­prise. It appoints a cen­tral leader and/or team to stew­ard the process, and allo­cates the resources nec­es­sary to make the trans­for­ma­tion hap­pen.

It’s at this point the trans­form­ers begin to encounter the chal­lenges of lega­cies. They’ll start to uncov­er pock­ets of tech­nol­o­gy, tools and sys­tems they didn’t know parts of the organ­i­sa­tion were using. In some cas­es, they’ll keep find­ing things months into the jour­ney, often too late to do any­thing about.

They’ll encounter some pos­i­tive recep­tion to the busi­ness’ intent from those hun­gry for greater digi­ti­sa­tion or the exper­tise and fund­ing to accom­plish it. But they’ll also encounter resis­tance from oth­er teams that “have our own tools, thank you very much”, “are already more dig­i­tal­ly savvy than the rest of the busi­ness” or are sim­ply “dif­fer­ent to the rest of the busi­ness and a gener­ic com­pa­ny-wide solu­tion won’t work”.

Practical advice

Tack­ling lega­cy sys­tems and man­ag­ing the dis­sent­ing voic­es requires a mea­sured approach.

The start­ing point is ensur­ing a com­mon def­i­n­i­tion of the busi­ness prob­lem or oppor­tu­ni­ty which the trans­for­ma­tion is designed to tack­le. Too often, trans­for­ma­tions focus on com­mu­ni­cat­ing pro­posed solu­tions, rather than build­ing a shared under­stand­ing of the ratio­nale for change and con­sen­sus as to its impor­tance. And it’s the pro­posed solu­tions which face these lega­cy bar­ri­ers and face sub­jec­tive crit­i­cism, often from those lack­ing the exper­tise to cast judg­ment.

Focus­ing stake­hold­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions on the busi­ness prob­lem or oppor­tu­ni­ty helps to iden­ti­fy pain points by depart­ment. If the busi­ness prob­lem is uncom­pet­i­tive cus­tomer deliv­ery per­for­mance, the trans­for­ma­tion team can tease out what this means for the mar­ket­ing team in cus­tomer churn; what it means for the finance team in reduced mar­gins and lost rev­enues; what it means for the cus­tomer ser­vice team in time lost in com­plaint pro­cess­ing; and what it means for oper­a­tions in terms of lost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

It also enables those lead­ing a trans­for­ma­tion to begin to probe what’s already hap­pen­ing across the organ­i­sa­tion that might fall into the scope of their plans. What tools do we cur­rent­ly have that address these issues? Which teams are already mak­ing progress and what can we learn from them? What oth­er ini­tia­tives around the organ­i­sa­tion are tar­get­ing these same busi­ness prob­lems and how do we dove­tail or con­nect these for max­i­mum impact?

This bal­anced approach to stake­hold­er involve­ment in trans­for­ma­tion focus­es teams on busi­ness deci­sions, not tech­nol­o­gy deci­sions, and can give a trans­for­ma­tion team a sol­id foun­da­tion from which to work around lega­cies, not get blind­sided by them.

Company-wide transformation

Practical advice