Build vs. Buy: 9 Questions to Ask The quest for digital solutions to modern business problems inevitably leads to a fundamental choice: Do you build a solution from the ground up or buy a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) system? The choice is rarely, if ever, straightforward. The first step is to gather some facts. To that…
The Build vs. Buy Dilemma In many aspects of life, you are given a fundamental choice: to make something or pay someone else to do it. Do you build a new coffee table for the living room, or buy one? Make a casserole for the company potluck, or buy one at the grocery store? Make…
IT Modernization: Pitfalls to Avoid With over 50 years of collective experience, lessons learned, and general wisdom, you would think that major IT projects wouldn’t fail at such an alarming rate–66% or more. But here we are, well into the 21st century, and the global success rate for major IT projects is still miserable. …
Eyes On the Prize: Best Practices for IT Modernization IT leaders at large and small companies and in all industries are modernizing their IT environments. Modernization projects can include network infrastructure, computing and storage hardware, applications, databases, websites, or a combination. Why are so many businesses going to the trouble and expense to modernize? Every…
Why do customers stop doing business with you? Most of them won’t tell you. They leave silently, without a trace. For every scathing negative Yelp review from a dissatisfied customer, dozens more simply ghost you. Although it’s difficult or impossible to determine why specific customers take their business elsewhere, it’s not hard to figure out…
Leveraging Modernization to Increase Productivity What are the significant risks associated with continuing to use legacy IT systems? For one thing: High cost. Despite the costs of modernizing legacy systems, maintaining older systems can cost you more money in the long run—mainly if something breaks and everyone who knows how to fix it…
Improving Employee Retention Through Modernization If you want your good employees to leave the company, here are some tips that will encourage them to seek employment elsewhere: Make them use outdated, inefficient, buggy software. Prevent them from enhancing their skills, growing in their careers, and keeping up with the times. Saddle them with unnecessary…
Financial Benefits of IT Modernization Like it or not, the unavoidable fact is that any IT transformation effort will cost money. Some investment will be required, which entails an opportunity cost: Money spent on modernizing an IT system must be spent on something other than new product development, service expansion, or other worthy initiatives.…
When you think of “application modernization,” what does it mean to you? It’s a broad concept that can mean different things in different organizations. Some common notions of application modernization include: All of the above and more are legitimate modernization examples. Every organization’s notion of application modernization is driven, at least in part, by…