Companies are avoiding system migrations for these 4 reasons. Here’s how they’re modernizing without migrating.

https://delivery-p141552-e1488202.adobeaemcloud.com/adobe/assets/urn:aaid:aem:49512400-2acb-4066-bc79-876d7b32f053/as/SAP_ECC_Modernize_without_migrating_Hero-image.jpg

To migrate or not to migrate: for companies around the world, that is the question.

With vendor deadlines for system migration looming, the pressure is on. Deciding how to migrate is notoriously difficult, but some businesses are asking a different, fundamental question: what if we could avoid a system migration altogether?

When they work, system migrations can be great for businesses. Newer systems are often more streamlined, faster, easier to work with, and better integrated with modern tools and technologies. All of this helps contain IT costs and improve business outcomes. McKinsey even foresees up to $1 trillion in business value in the cloud, just waiting to be unlocked.

So, with all of these potential benefits in mind, why are some companies still opting out of system migrations?

Reason 1: System migrations are expensive.

If there’s one thing nearly every study or survey about system migrations seems to agree on, it’s that they’re pricey. These massive projects frequently become money pits, especially when unforeseen issues crop up.

As many as ¾ of ERP transformations end up over budget, estimates McKinsey. In fact, ⅔ lead to negative ROI. With these stats in mind, many orgs see the potential benefits of a system migration pale in comparison to the massive financial investment required.

Reason 2: System migrations take a long time.

Some 38% of cloud migration projects end up behind schedule. This is because planning for and executing a migration is so complex. The bigger the migration, or the more customized and complicated the system, the longer the process.

Many system migration initiatives can take multiple years to complete, from pre-migration to hypercare. Even with careful planning, it’s easy for system migration timelines to drag on and on when problems of any kind emerge. All of the time that teams spend planning for and executing a migration could, for some companies, be better used tackling other modernization initiatives or solving more urgent problems.

Reason 3: System migrations can be very risky.

When system migrations go wrong, it isn’t just employees working through issues. Consequences are felt by customers, investors, and other stakeholders.

In the UK, for example, one bank’s system migration corrupted more than a billion customer records, leaving people spending weeks trying to access their money. Account balances were wrong, transactions were incorrectly recorded, and in some cases, customers saw other people’s account info in their own online banking profiles. The bank reported a $134 million loss for that year, primarily driven by the migration mess, vs. a $206 million profit for the prior year.

That may seem like an isolated horror story, but migrations often carry risks like this. Depending on the systems, the industries or functions, and the stakeholders involved, a migration gone wrong isn’t limited to a brief system outage. Failed or stalled migrations can bring businesses to an indefinite standstill and severely damage customer relationships. In a few extreme cases, migration issues have even triggered lawsuits from investors.

Reason 4: Existing systems serve many businesses just fine.

Many companies are averse to the idea of migrating systems simply because they’re happy with the setup they currently have.

It’s common for systems to be decades old and loaded with customizations to fit a business’s specific needs. For many orgs, that can be a good thing: their systems are set up just the way they prefer. They’ve found ways to optimize what they already have, and don’t feel the need to upend it all when things are, for the most part, working well.

In these cases, the pressure to migrate systems comes from the systems themselves, rather than companies’ needs. System vendors may incentivize or even demand a migration to bring their customers in line with the vendor’s vision for growth. If a company doesn’t feel an urgent need to migrate for their own reasons, having to take on the expense, time, and risk of such a major project by vendor decree can be a major imposition.

Is it even possible to modernize without migrating?

In short, yes. Migration is only one part of the enterprise modernization arsenal.

Companies that choose not to do a system migration usually pursue other types of modernization in order to remain competitive. Organizations can (and should!) also pursue projects like application optimization, process optimization, AI implementation, and automation. The best modernization strategy is one that is ongoing — not dependent on a one-and-done project.

These other modernization projects can be much cheaper, easier, and less risky than a migration. Any initiative that helps technologies work better, helps them work better together, and helps an organization incorporate any useful new advances or tools could be considered a part of enterprise modernization. System migration can and often does fall into this category, but certainly it isn’t the sum of it.

What’s standing in the way of modernizing systems, whether companies migrate or not?

Many companies have trouble modernizing their systems not because the systems are too old or too unwieldy, but instead because they’re too opaque.

For IT, core systems are too often “black boxes” which no one really knows how to safely customize, fix, or retrofit. And outside of IT, it’s worse: most businesses have no shared understanding of how processes flow across systems, or how people interact with them.

This makes modernization projects of all sorts, from migration to AI implementation, hard to pull off on time, within budget, and without problems.

Put simply, IT and the rest of the business need to have a shared, objective, and real-time, understanding of what’s actually going on with their systems, and be able to collectively answer questions like:

  • Who’s using them?
  • For what processes?
  • For what purposes?
  • When?
  • How do these processes impact or depend on any other systems, applications, or teams?

If IT and the business don’t have a way to consistently answer these questions, modernization projects become much more difficult.

How can Celonis Process Intelligence help companies that decide not to pursue a system migration?

Processes are the only things that run across systems and technologies. Because of this, they generate extremely useful data for companies trying to understand how their systems and technologies are actually used, like in those questions just above.

Following a process end-to-end can show where systems and technologies are working well, and where they can be improved. If a company wants to modernize without migrating, this is crucial information. All of those modernization projects mentioned earlier become much more effective when they’re built on an objective, real-time picture of how things really run. That’s exactly what Celonis does.

Beyond visibility, the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform also lets companies take action to make targeted improvements across their processes. Older system that’s clunky to work in? Use Celonis to trigger actions within it, without having to go into the system itself. Instead of replacing your technologies, Celonis makes them smarter, letting you orchestrate the right actions at the right times, and generating meaningful predictions, recommendations, and solutions.

And if AI is part of your modernization scheme (it really should be), Celonis helps with that, too. Process Intelligence gives AI the unique process context it needs to deliver ROI for your unique enterprise, consistently and at scale.

Make what you have work better than ever

With Celonis, you can optimize your systems and processes on your own terms and timeline – no migration necessary.

Want more in-depth modernization intel, whether you’re migrating or not?