Project Types Application Applicability

TLDR 📚⚡

Unsure of where your business sits in the context of legacy systems? We’ve categorised our software modernisation projects into three distinct types to help you find the best fit for your situation. Here’s a brief overview of the three project types:

1. Like-for-Like Replacements: Organisations often encounter legacy systems – outdated technology infrastructure that hinders productivity due to compatibility issues. L4L replacements upgrade systems, maintain workflows, minimise disruptions, and use existing infrastructure for cost-effective upgrades to meet modern standards and enable future enhancements.
   
2. Spreadsheets Replacements: Spreadsheets are convenient for data tasks initially, but struggle with complexity and volume, leading to errors. Custom applications offer scalable solutions, improving data management efficiency and accuracy.
   
3. Disparate System Replacements: As organisations expand, they often accumulate different systems gradually rather than through a cohesive strategy. A common solution is to integrate these systems into a single platform. This enhances accessibility, streamlines operations, and supports informed decision-making and efficiency.
   

Why Modernise?

First, it is essential to understand why organisations require modernisation. As organisations grow and expand, the demands on their systems increase. This necessitates more robust and scalable solutions to support larger user bases, more complex operations, and global integration. Modernising or replacing these systems becomes crucial to ensure operational efficiency, mitigate risks, and support organisational growth and compliance goals.

Legacy Modernisation

Our first project type is a like-for-like replacement of a legacy system. Legacy systems refer to outdated or obsolete technology, software application or IT infrastructure that remains in use within an organisation. Typically, these systems fulfil certain functional needs and/or are too costly or risky to replace. Whilst these systems are essential, they can become liabilities to a company because of their inability to keep up with the digital curve. Legacy systems can additionally affect productivity due to factors like outdated software, hardware, and infrastructure compatibility. These systems were typically designed before modern computing technologies and software development techniques, often resulting in the system being built on outdated programming languages and operating systems.

Challenges of Legacy systems

1. Outdated Technology: Legacy systems are often built on outdated architecture and technologies, making them incompatible with modern applications and hardware. This affects an organisation’s ability to leverage new features, integrate with modern systems, and respond to changing business needs.
   
2. Security Vulnerabilities: Legacy systems are more susceptible to security vulnerabilities due to outdated security measures and a lack of ongoing support and updates. Moreover, outdated systems may not receive regular security updates, making them a potential target for cyber attacks and data breaches. This poses a significant risk to the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive information.
   
3. Limited Scalability and Flexibility: Legacy systems often lack the scalability and flexibility needed to adapt to evolving business requirements. As organisations grow and change, legacy systems may struggle to accommodate increased workloads, and new functionalities.
   

Like-for-Like Replacements

A like-for-like (L4L) replacement of a legacy system involves upgrading an outdated system with a new one that preserves its existing functionalities and operational workflows. This approach is beneficial because it ensures operational continuity, allowing users to maintain their accustomed processes without requiring extensive training. It also mitigates risks by minimising the introduction of new errors or inefficiencies that could disrupt operations. From a cost perspective, (L4L) replacements are often more efficient than developing entirely new systems, leveraging existing infrastructure and knowledge whilst still benefiting from upgraded technology and support. Additionally, L4L replacements address compatibility issues with modern hardware, software, and security standards, ensuring continues support and compliance. L4L replacements lay a foundation for future enhancements, enabling organisations to gradually introduce improvements and optimise processes over time.

Project Example

An example of a L4L project we have undertaken is the Police NSW Legacy Migration for the Fatal Crash Microsoft Access Databases. This project focused on modernising the database into a secure and user-friendly platform that streamlined processes, reduced manual workload, and improved data accuracy, ultimately contributing to a more efficient and effective policing service to the community.

The offline system is used by the traffic research and intelligence unit as part of their traffic & highway patrol command. The data was stored on outdated Microsoft Access Databases, which did not align with the Department's modern web-based skills. This led to frequent database issues requiring substantial support from the internal IT department. Additionally, the safety team spent significant time daily transferring data from the COPS system.

We consolidated the 7 databases into a single entity diagram, this streamlined the complexity of managing 7 different systems into one cohesive, modern web application. The new application is built on .Net Core (C#) on the server-side and uses React on the client-side, aligning with Police NSW's current IT skill set, which facilitates easier maintenance and support in their on-premises environment. The project team enhanced the system by integrating Active Directory for automatic login, developing an API to automate daily data updates from the internal Oracle DB, enabling customer reporting, adding CRUD functionality for all entities, and establishing a Restful JSON API. Overall, Police NSW were satisfied that the new system met all IT requirements and replicated all previous functionalities effectively.

Spreadsheets

Our second project type focuses on spreadsheet modernisation. Organisations often rely on spreadsheets for data entry, calculation, and analysis due to their ease of use and accessibility. However, these spreadsheets, while initially convenient, can become a significant burden as business processes become more complex and data volumes increase. Spreadsheets are not inherently scalable and struggle to manage intricate data relationships and advances processing tasks. As data and formulas become more complex, managing them becomes increasingly challenging, resulting in errors, inefficiencies, and a lack of transparency. Addressing these issues requires more than just technological adjustments; it requires consideration of the organisations processes, and the people involves. In such cases, businesses often need to consider custom applications or modernising their spreadsheet systems to better handle their data needs.

Challenges of Spread Sheets

1. Errors: As many as 88% of all business spreadsheets contain errors. The larger the spreadsheet, the greater chance for error. This is a risk because it can lead to miscalculations that drive poor business decisions.
   
2. Version Control: Spreadsheets that reside locally on a user's desktop pose significant version control challenges. This setup increases the risk of duplicated efforts across different parts of an organisation, leading to confusion over the origins of data, responsibility, and the accuracy of the numbers. While SharePoint provides some assistance, it still lacks sufficient control mechanisms to fully mitigate these issues.
   
3. Speed and Efficiency: When dealing with large amounts of data, spreadsheets can run very slow. Users then often spend more time on data collection and verification, leaving little room for in-depth analysis.
   

Modernising Spreadsheets

One effective approach to modernising or replacing spreadsheets is to implement a custom application tailored to specific business needs. This solution provides flexibility and scalability, allowing for the efficient and accurate management of larger data volumes, complex data relationships, and advanced processing tasks. Custom applications are designed to meet the unique requirements of a business, ensuring improved scalability, data integrity, and functionality. Additionally, custom solutions can address specific needs that off-the-shelf software might not cover, enabling organizations to achieve greater efficiency, accuracy, and transparency in their data management processes.

Project Example

Q-Ride is the motorcycle training course that riders must complete in Queensland to qualify for their motorcycle license. The Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) initially managed this process using a combination of spreadsheets, emails, and internal know-how. However, this approach faced several challenges, including limited scalability, error-proneness, poor collaboration, lack of security, and difficulties with data integration, maintenance, and versioning.

We collaborated with TMR on a proof of concept (PoC) to explore using our platform engineering tool, Codebots, to modernise Q-Ride into a web application. The project resulted in 38,296 lines of code, with approximately 95% generated by the bots. All existing data was scripted for import into the new application, and all spreadsheet functionality was replicated. The project was a technical success, demonstrating Codebots' ability to seamlessly transform the Q-Ride spreadsheet into a modern web technology stack.

This project was part of TMR's broader digital transformation strategy, aimed at connecting both upstream and downstream systems, facilitating reporting, and easing information dissemination. With the new application modelled, the Department now has an extensible solution that can grow with their needs and support other managed accreditation schemes.

Disparate Systems

The third project type of project we offer is aimed at modernising disparate systems. As organisations grow and evolve, they often find themselves working with a collection of disparate systems that were added to their infrastructure piece by piece, rather than as part of a cohesive plan. These systems, whether manual or digital, are often built to solve specific problems, and over time, can become a liability to the organisation as they are difficult to manage, scale and support. These unconnected systems can lead to inefficiencies, data fragmentation, and operational complexities. Replacing these systems is a complex task that involves more than just technological changes. It requires a careful consideration of the organisation's processes, culture and the people involved.

Challenges of Disparate Systems

1. Lack of Integration: Disparate systems typically do not have mechanisms in place to share data easily. They operate independently, with minimal or no communication between them. Setting up and maintaining multiple systems can be time-consuming and resource intensive.
   
2. Data Management: Data may be stored in repositories within each system, making it challenging to access and analyse data across the organisation. Moreover, this can lead to limited data visibility which means users may only have access to data within the system they are working with. This can lead to incomplete or disorganised data which impairs decision-making and strategic planning. Therefore, a organisations ability to make informed decisions and set long-term strategies can be affected.
   
3. Inefficiencies: The lack of integration between systems can lead to unnecessary data entry and manual data transfer between systems, resulting in inefficiencies and errors. Additionally, managing multiple disparate systems can be complex and is time consuming for IT departments, as they must maintain and troubleshoot each system separately.
   

Replacing Disparate Systems

Replacing disparate systems is a complex task that requires careful consideration of several points. However, the benefits of this undertaking are substantial, including improved scalability, more efficient data management, and reduced liabilities. The most common solution to replacing disparate systems is to implement a single, integrated platform that consolidates data into one database. This approach makes information easily accessible and accelerates report generation. A single platform provides a comprehensive view, which is invaluable to decision-makers, enabling them to operate efficiently and make well-informed decisions based on reliable data. By following a structured approach and working collaboratively with stakeholders, organisations can overcome the challenges posed by disparate systems and improve their overall operational effectiveness.

Project Example

We worked with the Department of Defence (DoD) to enhance visibility within the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) procurement system. The old system consisted of multiple disparate systems which led to no centralised reporting or management. We consolidated various systems into a single cloud application, creating an advanced procurement platform. The transformation earned an internal innovation award for enabling real-time control over procurement budgets. This integration granted complete transparency of all NMP Procurement across the branch. Additionally, a comprehensive reporting pack, built on the data captured in the application, significantly increased the solution's ROI. This modernisation and consolidation of the CASG procurement system enabled the Department of Defence to make informed decisions and remain agile, efficient, and well-equipped for the future. Read the full DoD case study here.

Summary

As organisations grow and expand, the demands on their systems increase, necessitating more robust and scalable solutions to support larger user bases, more complex operations, and global integration. Modernising or replacing these systems becomes crucial to ensure operational efficiency, mitigate risks, and support organisational growth and compliance goals.

Feeling confused on which systems to modernise first? Read our blog where we discuss which systems to modernise first and a recommended approach for categorising system modernisation. *This needs to be linked to the article after migration