We all know wine gets better with age. But you know what doesn’t? Technology. Investing in traditional technology systems for your organization is less like getting your hands on a wonderfully aged bottle of cabernet and more like buying a slightly used car.
Think about it: You love that machine the day you drive it off the lot, but eventually, your fuel economy starts to decline, natural wear and tear leads to replacement parts, and the frequency of maintenance becomes an annoying intrusion on your daily life. Before you know it, that once-beloved vehicle is overheating on the side of the freeway in the middle of rush hour. (Been there.)
Legacy phone systems are just like cars; they decline in value (and functionality) over time. As years pass, the more difficult these systems will be to support, maintain and even integrate with new technology. They’ll cost more time, attention and frustration than you would have bargained for. But before we get into the gloomy specifics, let’s go over the basics.
What Is a Legacy System?
A legacy system is any outdated hardware, software or application that is built upon outdated technology, but is still vital to business processes. Because they are critical to day-to-day operations, they’re often very difficult to replace.
When it comes to your organization’s communications infrastructure, the most common legacy phone systems are T1 connections, POTs lines or TDM-PRI solutions. Essentially, any service that still leverages copper-based wiring and analog channels is considered legacy.
The Costs of Your Legacy System
You may be reluctant to take on the process of migrating from a legacy system to a cloud-based solution. Many have kicked it down the line, thinking that it’s not worth “fixing what’s not broken.” We hate to be the bearers of bad news, but postponing your digital transformation is just causing unnecessary costs to add up in the background. Let’s get into the five biggest sources of your legacy spending.
Maintenance
If you’ve ever had an old car, you know how much of a pain maintenance can become. It’s the same with your legacy phone system. Whether you’ve got to update the hardware, software or underlying infrastructure, you better be prepared to dedicate some valuable resources to keeping your systems up-to-speed. And that’s just updates. What about when something breaks?
Not only do you have to have someone on-hand to fix it, but they have to be properly trained to do so. It’s likely that you’ll need someone with a specific set of skills or expertise with this technology. Retaining that kind of talent (or even trying to manage the transfer of knowledge to other employees) becomes a hefty expense.
Wouldn’t you rather your IT team focus on innovation and development rather than maintenance and support?
Security
The longer a system has been around, the more time shady people have had to find its vulnerabilities. If your organization is still leveraging legacy technology, it’s likely liable to cyber attacks, hacks, fraud security breaches.
Whether you’re trying to proactively patch the holes in the armor or trying to save face in the wake of a data breach, you’re wasting time and money you should be using somewhere else. Investing in a cloud-based system with security baked in will save you a lot of anxiety in the long run.
Integration
Integration with other programs and platforms has become a standard of modern business applications. It’s why organizations like Microsoft and Salesforce are building ecosystems of tools that all play together. The modern business is all about making sure that one system links to another to create a seamless experience across the board.
Legacy systems, unfortunately, are usually too complex and outdated to integrate easily with other systems. In fact, they often require significant customization and coding to connect to a third-party program. So you either spend a lot of time and money focusing on trying to force capability, or you miss out on all of the incredible benefits of a fully integrated system. Either way, it’s a lose-lose.
Efficiency
If you want proof that a legacy system can hold your company back, look no further than 2020. When working from home went from a luxury to a necessity, thousands of organizations failed to adjust in a timely manner. Why? They didn’t have the kind of modern technology that would have allowed them to adapt easily.
Think about the companies who relied on their desk phones to make and receive business calls. They struggled to support their remote employees and adjust to the communication needs of a dispersed workforce. It’s not exactly sensical to pack up a deskphone and bring it home with you! In order to stay successful, companies need to have infrastructure in place that can adapt quickly and efficiently to the ever-changing needs of the market. And in the case of communications, that means having the cloud-based tools that will allow your teams to keep working from anywhere.
Opportunity
Companies just like yours miss out on incredible business opportunities every day because of their attachment to legacy systems. If your IT team is too focused on supporting an aging system, they won’t have the time to dedicate toward the kind of innovative solutions that will increase customer retention. If your customer care team isn’t able to answer the phone from home, expect to see your satisfaction scores plummet (especially during a global pandemic). And if your systems aren’t integrated with each other, you won’t have a clear understanding of your buyers’ journey, and you will miss out on opportunities to gain new customers.
If your organization hasn’t already transitioned away from legacy technology to the cloud, you’ve got some work to do. The good news is, we can help. As experts in cloud communications, we’re fully committed to migrating your organization’s communications systems to the cloud.
Our team is on standby waiting to answer all of your questions about cloud communications and digital migration. All you have to do is take the first step. Reach out to us today!
