Your company has grown large over many years and now has multiple business units, including several from acquisitions. But growth has suddenly hit a wall. The patchwork of outdated legacy apps that supported the business until today hinders your progress and competitiveness. These apps aren't keeping pace with your evolving business needs because they don’t scale well, their maintenance costs are high, and they’re rife with security vulnerabilities and integration and compliance challenges. On top of that, many of them are nearing or past their end of life, so you’re on your own for support.

The way forward is clear: It's time to embrace digital transformation and modernize those legacy apps, leveraging recent advances like generative AI in tools such as Microsoft Power Platform, so that you can streamline processes, better engage with younger, more mobile tech-savvy employees and unlock the full potential of technology to return your business to profitable growth.

But how do you sort through the scores of legacy apps in your organization to know which ones to modernize first and the best approach to take for each? Luckily, there are companies that specialize in just that, including HCLTech.

HCLTech's legacy app prioritization framework

Having modernized legacy infrastructures for dozens of customers, HCLTech has developed a time-proven prioritization framework that you can test for your own organization. This framework places every application into one of four categories to help business decision-makers assess each app’s value to the business, its technical state and, therefore, the appropriate approach for modernizing each one. For many companies, HCLTech deploys Microsoft Power Platform as the solution to replace or bind together existing apps, such as with our SAP enhancement and wraparound services.

The four categories in HCLTech’s framework are consolidation, transformation, retain and surround and lift and shift. Each category has its own characteristics and modernization approach.

Prioritization using HCLTech's framework

Transformation: Revolutionizing critical processes

As the accompanying four-quadrant infographic shows, legacy apps in the transformation category are the most valuable to the business and the most time-critical. These apps support unique or essential business processes that differentiate the company and make it successful.

So, it is no surprise that apps in the transformation category require the most disruptive approach. They necessitate significant changes to bring their performance, security and user experience up to modern specs. To modernize these apps, you'll need to start with design workshops to revamp business processes. This includes identifying which processes are candidates for automation thanks to recent advances in generative AI and associated machine learning algorithms. App designers should also assess the business' reporting and analytics needs, now and in the future and upgrade the apps’ user experience and security efficacy. Apps in the transformation category are prime candidates for hosting in the cloud, such as Microsoft Azure — which is, of course, the ideal host for apps transformed via Microsoft Power Platform, including its Power Apps low-code development environment and advanced reporting tools, such as Power BI.

However, the effort expended on these apps should be worth it because their strategic transformation can lead to substantial improvements in business performance and outcomes.

Consolidation: Streamlining similar workloads

The consolidation category focuses on combining similar workloads across your organization. This approach is ideal for apps that perform comparable functions in different departments or geographies and redundant systems that can be combined to reduce complexity and improve efficiency. Apps in this category have high value to the business but are only sometimes time critical.

The modernization approach for these apps involves grouping related applications, forms, databases and reports. By consolidating these elements, you can eliminate unnecessary software licenses and integrations and automate manual processes, improving efficiency and reducing operational costs. A byproduct of the consolidation approach is the standardization of the relevant business processes across departments and geographies, which is a big win for any business.

Retain and surround: Enhancing undifferentiated processes

The retain and surround category is for undifferentiated, heavily customized, and integrated back-office applications. These apps, considered lower in business value and not time-critical, are often commercial off-the-shelf applications that support standard processes but don’t provide a competitive edge.

The modernization approach here is tactical rather than strategic. Surround existing applications, such as an SAP enterprise resource planning system, with modern tools, including Microsoft Power Apps, to improve data accessibility, add mobility and raise the quality of the entire user experience. This approach allows you to address immediate business and IT challenges without a complete overhaul — and achieves a positive outcome faster than other approaches.

Lift and shift: Providing minimal disruption and maximum efficiency

The lift and shift category is for applications that require minimal user engagement and have less business value but are time critical. These are often IT-led apps that can be moved to the cloud with minimal disruption to business operations.

To modernize these apps, focus on migrating them to the cloud as-is. This approach allows for faster time to market with minimal disruption. Once the apps are in the cloud, you can incrementally improve the user experience and data integrations using tools like Microsoft Power Platform.

Embrace digital transformation with HCLTech

Now that you understand HCLTech's framework for categorizing legacy applications, it’s time to act. Begin by inventorying your legacy applications and assessing them against these four categories. This will help you prioritize modernization efforts and determine the most appropriate approach for each app. Naturally, HCLTech is best positioned to help organizations use this framework and our other best practice tools to modernize their legacy apps.

But whether you engage us or do it yourself, don’t let outdated legacy apps hold your business back. With user-friendly interfaces, improved data manipulation capabilities and enhanced security, your modernized applications will drive operational efficiency and business agility, returning growth to your organization.