The value of a proven system cannot be denied, but as time, technology, and customer attitudes shift, how long will it be before your legacy system becomes a hindrance?
Your legacy customer communications management systems are tried, tested and proven repeatedly; in fact, for most organisations they are the reliable ‘workhorse’ for delivering customer services. But how long will it be before your legacy system becomes a hindrance and how do you know if you are overdue a change?
For many organisations, legacy is already presenting issues, but for some they are still to be realised. Here at Icon UK, we want to support businesses in transforming their document and text centric Customer Communications Management (CCM) systems, helping them to avoid these issues and realise the benefits of a modern CCM solution.
Here’s 5 big issues that you need to know about:
1. You’re missing out on modern features
We don’t need to remind you how fast technology changes and moves on. We know from our experience that some organisations still use mainframe CCM technologies that were developed in the 1980s, before communications channels such as SMS messaging, social media and video calling were invented.
The Icon Suite affords you the opportunity to take advantage of omni-channel communications approaches, allow easy yet powerful personalisation and enable convenient self-service options for your customers.
2. You’re tied to old tech
The biggest enemy of old technologies is obsolescence. Software and hardware date fast and, as replacements are made available for them, the level of support available becomes extremely limited as does the availability of physical parts or skills (often compounded by old or unavailable documentation). You carry the catastrophic commercial risk of your system malfunctioning and having little ability to repair or recover it within normal operating timelines – are you prepared to carry such a risk?
The Icon Suite allows seamless transfers of existing intellectual property, logic and processes embedded within code (possibly built up over thirty years!) from your legacy CCM. This removes your ties to old technology whilst enabling you to retain the business-critical, important information.
3. You might be vulnerable
There’s an elephant in the room...Security.
Legacy systems weren’t built with today’s cybersecurity threats in mind – how could they have been? Patching over potential exploits and vulnerabilities is fine, but there’s got to be a better way for you to deploy your in-house resources? The older your systems grow, the more vulnerable they become as legacy skillsets fade from the workforce and the ability to secure your systems properly fades too!
4. It’s costing you a fortune!
So here’s something you might find shocking: organisations are spending between 50% and 90% of their total IT budgets on maintaining legacy systems. That’s a big deal. Imagine being able to reduce the spend on your legacy CCM to a fraction of the current cost through a smarter, easier to manage solution.
The Icon Suite’s powerful management options enable administration to be devolved from specialist, centralised IT teams to individual departments – who can manage the vast majority of their needs themselves. And reduce total cost of ownership dramatically whilst being more responsive.
5. Regulators HATE risk.
Legacy systems pose unique risks for their operators, particularly in regulated industries, such as banking and financial services. Security issues, obsolescence, lack of vendor support, unavailability of skilled staff, documentation (or even source code), are all contributing factors toward the risk of prolonged system failure. This is a risk that must be constantly reviewed for likelihood and impact.
Moving across to a modern CCM mitigates the risk of system failure by removing the high-risk factors mentioned above. This action also shows diligence to regulators if a failure did ever occur. Of course, no system is completely unsusceptible to risk – think about a modern car versus a 1980s car today, which one is more likely to suffer a breakdown? But acting to modernise shows a level of diligence, rather than a ‘mend and make do until it breaks’ attitude.
Stress-free, simple and cost-effective transformation
Don’t let any of these five risks become a major problem for your organisation. Icon UK is here to help you modernise and transform your customer communications management systems. We offer one of the only solutions on the market which is able to successfully migrate legacy content, processes and system logic from one system to another without ‘ripping and replacing’ your existing solution or losing content previously built up over many years.
Whether you choose to act now to transform your legacy customer communications management solution or you wait, these pressing legacy issues will need to be dealt with at some point (even if you let your existing CCM infrastructure crumble first!). And an investment in software from Icon can significantly reduce systems complexity, in raw numbers, interconnectivity requirements and platform-neutral architectures.
The Icon Suite enables businesses to transform their legacy system to a modern, omni-channel communications solution – a platform from which customer experience, loyalty, revenue, and profitability can all be directly influenced and impacted.
Steve Reynolds, Sales Director
SteveR@icon-uk.net
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