Product Modernization is Essential. But How to Go About it the Right Way?

The only thing that remains constant is change. It is true for enterprise technology as well. No matter the choice of vendors or technology or development strategies, as time evolves, every enterprise must deal with the problem of their technology stack aging compared to market trends.

A futuristic AI-powered technology in use today can turn into a legacy bottleneck in just a couple of years, courtesy of the pace of evolution in digital technology.

However, on the bright side, technology today is far more democratized and open, resulting in lower costs and better accessibility for new features or updates. Therefore, it is feasible to even for small and medium businesses to fight in the market with the latest tech. To counter the challenge of aging, modernizing the underlying technology ecosystem must be a key priority for companies. And it should be an ongoing initiative and not a one-time investment.

As consumers demand more digital-driven experiences, every business is transforming into a tech company, and their core business operations are increasingly driven by technology. In other words, every company is becoming a product-oriented business where the core technology behind the scenes is becoming a productized commodity or platform.
Going into a product development mindset for enterprise tech is favorable to staying competitive. Still, it is not free from the initial challenge mentioned above – the need for modernization. Modernization enables businesses to stay ahead in competitiveness and innovation even when crowded. But the real challenge lies in figuring out how to adapt product modernization the right way.
Let us explore 5 tips to help enterprises get it right with their product modernization initiatives.

1. Prioritize Modernization Candidates
   Not every facet of your existing product or technology platform may need a refresh or modernization. It is essential to have a strategic evaluation of how current business systems are enabling value creation under evolving market conditions. If your existing product or a component within a larger platform ecosystem can handle the dynamic needs of the market for now, then you can skip its modernization plan. This helps in prioritizing budgetary allocation. As market conditions become more uncertain, especially with events like the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to conserve cash and invest in technology upgrades that genuinely help unlock more value than the cost burden it creates for the same business purpose.
2. Evaluate Process Maturity
   Technology will drive your business in the future. Still, there is also a need for underlying business processes and workflows to be as agile as the technology that your business consumes. Therefore, enterprises need to evaluate and ascertain the maturity of their core business processes to enable modern customer experiences and empower seamless integration of new tech innovations. In addition, it requires a thorough understanding of business practices that are being followed in the market, identifying weaknesses in the value chain, and eliminating, modifying, or incorporating new business processes to ensure a smooth modernization environment for the business’s technology stack.
3. Identify Disruptive Dependencies
   Product modernization initiatives can result in few or all components of underlying technology modules undergoing a rapid change depending on the desired capabilities. However, several data flows and technology resources may be interconnected within different business units. As a result, modifying any component or module may result in downstream impacts on dependent services or tools, which, if left unnoticed, can even negatively affect the entire business operations. Therefore, it is important to identify and map dependent technology services and create disruption mitigation plans for the upgrade, including modernizing the dependent service to suit the new requirements.
4. Foster the Adoption of Automation
   While picking new technologies, tools, and processes to support the modernization initiative, make sure to encourage those that enable automation across the spectrum. This will help the business’s underlying technology architecture to match the scale of usage required in the future with minimal or incremental changes. In addition, this helps optimize costs and makes it easier to manage the technology ecosystem for businesses.
5. Invest in your People
   It is true to the extent that technology modernization can help businesses cope with the demanding nature of evolving markets. But to fully leverage the benefits of upgraded technology, it is crucial to have your staff upgrade their competencies and skills to run the technology better and deliver excellent customer experiences. Training, upskilling and best practice awareness initiatives need to go in tandem with the modernization schedules ensuring that your business offers the best technology and human resources to the market, which is a very lethal combination to help succeed in the market.

Product modernization is an essential practice for sustained growth irrespective of the type of business that an enterprise deals with. Therefore, it is vital to strategically approach the modernization plan to ensure that maximum ROI is leveraged in the shortest time frame and market competitiveness is assured for the long run. For this to become a reality, it is important to have an experienced technology partner on your side that can handle your end-to-end product modernization needs in alignment with your business priorities.

Collaborate with us to elevate your product’s position and accelerate its growth.