The Risk of Outdated Legacy Systems – How Woodmansterne reaped the benefits of technology change.

Technology is evolving rapidly, but many businesses still hold on to legacy systems, fearing that implementing a new infrastructure could be too costly and have the potential for major business interruptions. What they should ask however, is:

What is the cost of keeping outdated technology?

At Coliance, we have found that most companies spend more time and money maintaining their legacy system, as opposed to the effort and cost of upgrading. They face increasing difficulty as their system ages:

  1. Decreased security – full safeguarding is impaired with decreased security patches from developers, including backup and disaster recovery challenges.
  2. Regulatory compliance – possible fees and penalties if you experience a data breach, not to mention failing to meet your ESG goals. (Link to Chris article)
  3. Downtime – older software or hardware systems suffer frequent system downtime – that could cause an organization to lose customers if their services are inaccessible.
  4. Incompatibility – Some legacy systems prohibit you from using new, advanced capabilities that offer more efficient partner onboarding or disallow you to break away from limited vendor communication options that are high in data charges.
  5. Lack of scalability and growth – Legacy systems are often incapable of handling increased production capacity.

There are several hidden costs incurred when a legacy system fails:

  • IT recovery and data restoration expenses
  • Disgruntled customers and lost sales
  • Brand/loyalty damage
  • Lost employee productivity and overall morale
  • IT departments spending all their productive hours repairing instead of innovating

Woodmansterne cards, the UK’s leading publisher and manufacturer of greeting cards, were familiar with all the issues experienced with outdated legacy software. Recently featured on the BBC’s – “Inside the factory”, Woodmansterne is a third generation card company and the foremost supplier of greeting cards to independent retailers in Britain. Supplying around 30 million cards a year, they are one of the UK’s leading greeting cards manufacturers. The Greeting card market in the United Kingdom is worth GBP1.7billion with the purchase of 900 million cards at Christmas time alone. Until 2020, (and before they met Coliance) Woodmansterne was reliant on technology that was difficult to maintain and inflexible to their requirements, specifically to onboard new partners and services.

Find out how Coliance helped Woodmansterne modernize and remove obstacles, bringing them to a complete digital transformation, future proofing their organisation and maximizing their efficiencies. Read the full article here.

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