In today’s world, digital is an immensely popular buzzword. The technological landscape is ever-changing, and companies must be ready to change. You might get confused while deciding between digital transformation vs. digital modernization regarding which is appropriate for your requirements, so we’re here to clarify all of your doubts.
Digital transformation is an all-encompassing change in ideology, processes, people, and technology. This transformation can be done by companies from all industries as this involves reimagining the business to suit the new digital age. Digital transformation revolves around finding better ways to provide service to the customers as well as interacting with the customers. This enables companies to remain flexible, agile, and ready for future digital developments and growth.
Advanced technologies are used to help transform a company’s entire structure and processes to become ready for the future. Digital transformation requires strategies and roadmaps to help implement these tools in place of existing processes and tools.
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Digital transformation can often be confused with digital modernization, so it’s important for businesses to understand what digital modernization is and how it differs from digital transformation. This can later help companies choose between digital transformation vs. digital modernization.
Digital modernization, in simple language, is the process of upgrading existing processes and adopting new technology systems to meet the needs of the industry. This is often under the CIO’s purview and is mainly undertaken to better the operations and infrastructure of the business. This modernization can help a business by increasing efficiency, improving existing processes, and reducing costs.
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Digital modernization is also more focused on creating a more engaging front-end interface so that customers have a great experience with the company or website. UI and UX are the focus points for this process. It is undertaken to help companies move from legacy systems to online platforms and services such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Office 365, etc. New visualization tools are also ideal for gaining better and more innovative insights from existing systems and data through digital modernization. Read more about digital modernization here!
Digital modernization is ideal for companies that are looking for fast, efficient, and cost-effective solutions while ensuring that their existing processes aren’t disrupted. Understanding digital modernization is important when choosing between digital transformation vs. digital modernization. This can involve legacy modernization, IT modernization, and application modernization, depending on the requirements of the business or company.
Legacy modernization involves upgrading the existing legacy systems to reduce the complexity of IT processes and costs, improve data consistency, and enable collaboration and flexibility in teams across platforms.
In an increasingly competitive and digital world, your software and systems can set you apart from the rest of your competitors. This has caused many companies to undergo legacy modernization to ensure that they can keep up with customer demands and enterprise norms. Depending on the requirements of the company, when choosing between digital transformation vs. digital modernization, legacy modernization may be enough to help companies catch up and remain in the competition.
Legacy systems include any software, systems, or technology that are causing issues, slowing down growth, and preventing businesses from adapting to new environments. If an existing system cannot support the needs of the organization, it can be considered a legacy system. If existing software cannot integrate efficiently with new technology or software, it can be considered legacy software.
It is predicted that by the end of 2020, every dollar invested in digital business will require enterprises to spend at least triple the total amount to continuously modernize the legacy application portfolio by Gartner.
Although business innovation is at the forefront of every company nowadays, these companies need to have robust and flexible systems in the backend that can handle newer processes and technology. Many older existing systems and software can’t cope with this workload, which is where legacy system modernization comes in.
There are multiple ways of going about legacy modernization, and it is necessary to decide which method suits the needs of your organization:
IT modernization is the process of shifting away from older technological solutions like Traditional ERPs to more innovative and automated solutions and technology. This also involves accepting the cloud, cloud-first solutions, and data centers as viable options where your business can consume as much hardware or software as it needs. This process is vital for ensuring that you have the correct resources, people, and processes in place to ensure that your company is ready for innovation.
In an IDG survey, it was found that although only 25% of the enterprises pursuing IT modernization have achieved their first goals, they are all experiencing significant benefits such as improved quality of service (65%) and more customer satisfaction (52%).
IT modernization also involves ensuring that your IT professionals are up to the mark for undertaking a modernization effort. This can be solved by looking for managed services or as-a-service offerings. Digital modernization is ideal between digital transformation vs. digital modernization while shifting towards newer technologies.
Modernizing your business may require an in-depth understanding of the existing data flows and the further effects of upgrading or changing any applications. These data-movement patterns need to be completely analyzed, and a plan needs to be decided upon before beginning an IT modernization effort. Legacy modernization may also be a part of IT modernization as older, inefficient applications and software may need to be replaced or changed to suit the current business needs.
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Application modernization involves updating and modernizing existing applications to suit the needs of the company or business. This can require changing and upgrading the platform infrastructure, internal architecture, or features to ensure that the application is suitable for the current digital landscape. Using scalable app environments like the cloud, a company can ensure that the applications will be able to help with meeting customer needs in the future as well. Companies that are heavily dependent on existing applications may choose digital modernization when choosing between digital transformation vs. digital modernization.
Application modernization also requires a thorough analysis of which applications can benefit from being upgraded. These applications need to be able to offer better customer satisfaction and ROI after being upgraded with cloud, new features, improved speed, better performance, scalability, etc.
Legacy applications can become exceedingly difficult to update/upgrade as well as expensive to scale, so it’s a good idea to modernize these applications so that they are ready for the future. The modernization of these applications could save you time and money in the future, and it might get the job done without having to turn towards any new solutions or digital transformation. Here are a few ways to modernize an application:
Digital modernization can be difficult without a well-thought-out roadmap in place. While deciding between digital transformation vs. digital modernization, you need to know how to build this roadmap. Here are a few steps that you can follow to undergo successful digital modernization:
While many individuals use these two terms interchangeably, the difference between digital transformation vs. digital modernization has slowly become evident, and the definitions became clearer for these two processes. Here are a few ways to differentiate between digital transformation vs. digital modernization:
Digital Transformation | Digital Modernization |
---|---|
A change in the ideology of the company involving new ways of working and new core values focused on digital solutions. | Adopting new technology systems, platforms and solutions to replace legacy solutions which are becoming inefficient. |
Involves using advanced, innovative technologies to look into alternative lines of business that are undiscovered. | Involves moving towards cloud-based solutions such as Google Cloud, Microsoft 365 or other as-a-service offerings to increase efficiency. |
Involves changing the way that business is conducted and making fundamental changes to the company. | Involves migrating existing systems to cloud-based platforms to increase the capabilities, flexibility and stability of the company. |
Strategies involve cloud, AI, blockchain technology, no-code, etc. | Strategies include legacy modernization, application modernization, IT modernization, etc. |
It’s important to decide which is best for your company- digital transformation vs. digital modernization. Digital transformation vs. digital modernization is a choice that can help you create a digitally prepared company to overcome future problems.
Digital transformation and digital modernization are both important methods of finding ways to join the digital wave that sweeping across industries. Digital transformation is a good idea for companies ready to completely change their ideology and basic processes. Digital modernization is a good idea for companies that are interested in increasing efficiency for certain processes through digital solutions. Regardless of what method you choose, you’ll definitely reap the benefits of going digital!
Quixy is a no-code platform that can help you with your digital transformation vs digital modernization needs. We can help you build a variety of digital solutions that can help accelerate your growth and boost the processes in your business. Don’t miss out on the chance to elevate your processes. Take the first step and get started with Quixy today.