Your Legacy Software is Like a Flip Phone: Time to Upgrade to NetSuite

NetSuite is a comprehensive, modern, cloud-based ERP that provides a great alternative to legacy systems that hold your company back from greatness.

Trusty flip phones did a basic job of making phone calls, but they couldn’t text, browse the web, or capture high-quality pics. Still, some users have stuck with this outdated technology at the risk of getting disconnected and left in the dust of the mobile phone technology whirlwind.

The same goes for aging legacy systems, which continue to drive many organizations but that have long outlived their useful lives. Comfortable and familiar, these systems may be severely limiting your company’s potential with their limited functionality, information silos, scalability challenges, and security concerns…to name just a few common problems these solutions present.

Modern technology has also come a long way over the last 5-10 years, which means any legacy system put in place years ago and still in use has turned into a proverbial flip phone for the people who have to use it every day. On-premises legacy systems also force companies to:

• Maintain the servers and other hardware within their own data centers.
• Invest in hardware, software, space and personnel to implement and keep the system running.
• Endure disruptive software upgrades, which can be particularly onerous for solutions that have been heavily customized to a company’s unique requirements.
• Deal with issues like version lock, where forgoing upgrades force users to rely on older, out-of-date versions of the software.

A cloud ERP like NetSuite eliminates all these issues (and more) and gives companies a business system that scales up right along with them instead of throttling growth and progress. It also offers a user-friendly, modern interface that employees will actually enjoy using—a particularly important “win” for companies that recruit from a talent pool that grew up with digital technology at its fingertips.

“Generally, cloud ERP solutions offer a more efficient approach, letting companies take advantage of tremendous computing power,” NetSuite says. “Shifting from on-premises to cloud ERP generally offers lower upfront costs, faster implementation and reduced physical and staff resource usage. Companies can become more agile with cloud-based systems because they are highly adaptable and scalable.”

Bringing Everything Under One Roof with NetSuite

When companies approach award winning NetSuite Alliance Partner, Vursor for help replacing their aging legacy systems with a unified business management solution, it kicks off the engagement by completing a full assessment of the organization’s current state and future goals. In nearly all cases, the data gaps, numerous process workarounds and the burden of excessive manual work will surface pretty quickly.??

Devon Aubert, PMP , Solutions Architect and Delivery Leader at Vursor, says the focus is usually on using NetSuite out of the box as the core system, and then customizing the cloud ERP only as needed. This helps companies break free of their overly-customized legacy systems, eliminates version lock and ensures that the vendor’s twice-yearly upgrades take place in the background, with no disruptions to business operations.??

“Between NetSuite and the partners that develop integrated solutions to extend the ERP’s functionalities, we can build out an in-house solution that can be managed internally without the need for ‘offline processes,’” says Aubert. “We bring everything together under one roof.”?

Vursor also helps companies develop and follow a success roadmap that may include shifts like integrating payroll or employees within NetSuite’s native human resources management (HRM) system. Vursor helps companies understand the value of having such processes in their ERPs, versus relying on outside applications to manage myriad different functions.

Knowing that an ERP implementation isn’t a “set it and forget it” exercise, Vursor also helps companies optimize their NetSuite investments over time. Some of this is folded into the implementation process while future optimizations are handled through Vursor’s managed services offering.

“We basically develop a roadmap that shows companies how to regularly update and improve their ERP over time,” says Aubert, who suggests continual, year-over-year tweaks in order to keep the system optimized and running at top performance levels.’

It should be something that's continually improved year over year. Unlike those old legacy systems, today’s business systems are dynamic, constantly being improved upon, and ready to help users tackle current challenges and address future issues.

“A modern ERP isn’t something that’s stale and stagnant,” says Aubert. “You want regular updates and enhancements brought forward to the team, in the spirit of reducing system costs and improving system efficiencies.”

Five Steps to Success

Change is never easy, but moving away from a stagnant legacy system and over to a dynamic platform like NetSuite provides undeniable results that companies simply can’t afford to ignore. Having orchestrated many of these shifts during his career, Aubert says the bottom line is that moving to a new platform is “way less painful” than most people realize.

Here are five steps Aubert tells all companies to take once they’ve made the decision to ditch their legacy systems:

1. Start the ERP evaluation process at least three months prior to your planned implementation start date.
2. Even before you pick your ERP you can document your standard operating procedures (SOPs) across all of your various systems.
3. Share those SOPs with your ERP implementation partner, which won’t have to “pick apart” all of your business processes.
4. Cleanse your current data.
5. Assemble an internal implementation team to serve as a sponsor and point of contact for the project.

Read the latest Vursor insights here: https://vursor.com/insights/