Prioritize and build a strong business case for modernization to accelerate your digital transformation

Modernization is a key facet of digital transformation as it involves the adoption and integration of new technologies, processes, and strategies in order to improve efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness. Digital transformation often involves the use of digital technologies to automate and streamline business processes, improve customer experiences, and enable new forms of innovation and value creation. Modernization is necessary in order to keep up with the rapid pace of technological change and to take advantage of the opportunities that digital technologies offer.

For example, modernizing business processes through the use of digital technologies can help organizations to reduce the time and resources required to complete tasks, improve the accuracy and reliability of information, and enhance communication and collaboration. Modernization can also help organizations to better understand and respond to the needs and preferences of their customers, as well as to stay ahead of the competition by adopting new technologies and approaches.

Overall, modernization is a key aspect of digital transformation because it enables organizations to continually evolve and improve in order to stay relevant and competitive in a rapidly changing digital environment.

Yet, despite the strong correlation between modernization and successful digital transformation, CIOs and IT leaders often find it challenging to create a modernization business case that convinces management — especially business stakeholders — to?invest, with case weakness often stemming from taking an IT-centric approach.

To build a strong business case for modernization, Gartner recommends that you:

• Align?your application modernization business case to business objectives, priorities and appetite for change by using four critical business case?sections: problem statement, technology migration, project description and cost-benefit analysis.
• Prioritize critical business capabilities and identify associated applications for modernization by executing a business-led analysis of IT assets.
• Reduce disruption, risk, uncertainty and time to value by dividing the application modernization program into multiple smaller waves of work. Use business capability value to identify, prioritize and bundle applications into these waves.

There are several risks that organizations should consider when modernizing their business processes and systems through digital transformation. Some of the potential risks of modernization include:

1. Cost and budget: Modernization can be a costly undertaking, particularly if it involves the implementation of new technologies or the overhaul of existing systems. Organizations need to carefully consider the costs and benefits of modernization in order to ensure that it is a viable and worthwhile investment.
2. Complexity: Modernization can also introduce new levels of complexity, particularly if it involves the integration of multiple systems or the adoption of new technologies. This can make it difficult to manage and maintain the modernized systems, and may require the hiring of additional staff or the implementation of new processes to ensure smooth operation.
3. Disruption to operations: Modernization can also disrupt business operations, particularly if it involves significant changes to systems or processes. It is important to carefully plan and manage the modernization process in order to minimize disruption and ensure that operations can continue as smoothly as possible.
4. Security and privacy: The adoption of new technologies and systems can also introduce new security and privacy risks. Organizations need to carefully consider and address these risks in order to protect their data and assets, and to maintain the trust of customers and stakeholders.
5. Resistance to change: Finally, modernization can be met with resistance from employees and other stakeholders who may be hesitant to adopt new technologies or change longstanding business processes. It is important to effectively communicate the benefits and rationale for modernization, and to provide training and support to help employees adapt to the changes.

At Intelliswift Software , we have a multi-discipline team focused on helping customers with their modernization journey. On one hand we have a strong product engineering team that is leveraging the latest programming tools and frameworks, with associated DevOps and Test Automation teams to help customers migrate their legacy applications to a contemporary, microservices/API based, cloud-native underpinning. On the other hand we have folks reimagining how these apps will be hosted and delivered in a multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud world. Our recent conversations with our customers' IT leaderships suggest that modernization is going to be a key component of IT spend portfolio in 2023. We look forward to be a part of our customers' modernization journey in 2023 - our skilled professionals, along with our best practices, frameworks, accelerators, agile execution, and choice of partner technologies and tools enables us to reduce time to market, while mitigating the risks frequently associated with modernization.