Digital transformation is vital for any organization wishing to offer the best experience to its users. That’s why digital transformation platforms include tools and technologies to help companies modernize their business operations and transition to digital working systems.
Reliable platforms for digital transformation offer numerous benefits, including increased operational efficiency and productivity, improved customer experience and satisfaction, better decision-making through data-driven insights, and a competitive advantage in the marketplace through enhanced agility and flexibility.
In short, digital transformation is essential to any company that wants to successfully offer new and modern services, and a reliable platform for digital transformation is essential for a smooth transition to the future.
What is a digital transformation platform?
A digital transformation platform is a type of computing platform that aims to keep business models running while supporting a company’s digital transformation.
These platforms include a comprehensive set of tools and technologies to help companies modernize their business operations and transition to digital working systems.
What is a legacy system?
Legacy systems are older computer systems, software applications, or technology that often support critical business processes. They are typically built on older architectures, which may no longer be supported, therefore making them a security risk.
Legacy systems often contain essential data but are unable to scale or integrate with newer technologies to meet contemporary business needs.
Why are digital transformation platforms needed for legacy systems?
Businesses that rely on legacy systems can struggle to take advantage of digital transformation because they lack the flexibility, agility, and compatibility necessary to integrate with modern technologies.
Digital transformation platforms can help companies bridge the gaps between their legacy systems and modern technologies. This provides opportunities to improve integration, agility, data access and analysis, and security while unlocking the potential of existing systems and enhancing digital competitiveness.
Five examples of digital platforms for business transformation
There are numerous platforms available for digital transformation. These five types are examples of platforms that can help companies and organizations bring their business model into the digital age.
Integration platforms
A digital integration platform, sometimes known as an integration platform as a service (iPaaS), is a software solution designed to integrate legacy applications, systems, and data sources with more modern technologies.
Integration platforms allow businesses to enjoy the benefits of digital transformation, such as enhanced efficiency, improved customer experiences, and data-driven insights, without the risks that come with fully retiring legacy systems.
OpenLegacy is an example of a digital transformation platform for legacy system integration.
Cloud platforms
A cloud platform uses cloud-based infrastructure and services for digital transformation. Cloud platforms come in many forms, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) can all be built using cloud architecture.
By providing the necessary foundation and resources for cloud computing, cloud platforms allow businesses to stay competitive in the digital age. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are some of the biggest and most well-known digital transformation cloud platforms currently available to businesses.
Aggregation platforms
Aggregation platforms operate on a spoke–hub distribution paradigm where the platform owner functions as a middleman in business-to-customer relationships.
These platforms collect or aggregate various resources in real-time to connect users with the most appropriate ones for their needs. They’re primarily used to carry out and automate tasks, such as making sales or getting responses from customers.
Marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon are one type of aggregate platform.
Social platforms
Major players in social digitalization include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Social digital transformation platforms aim to engage subsets of users with overlapping interests.
With these platforms, the owner isn’t involved in network building—it occurs organically.
These platforms can also lead potential customers to aggregation platforms, where they might book a demo, make a purchase, or sign up for a membership.
Learning platforms
Learning platforms, such as Udemy or Coursera, are vital for teachers and leaders who want to encourage innovation by helping their staff master new skills.
These platforms make learning easier by offering reliable and reputable resources to their users, as well as linking them with fellow learners for collaboration. Users can work together, earn badges, share insights and ideas, and rate lessons.
How digital transformation tools can help industries modernize legacy systems
Finance
The rise of FinTech has seen trillions of dollars of business go to modern digital-only banks that offer fast and easy mobile banking. With the core business systems of many traditional banks housed in legacy mainframes, it can seem impossible to transfer the sensitive data necessary for transactions, mortgages, and more to cloud-native systems.
Using a digital integration tool allows banks to combine legacy assets and digital innovation. Building new digital product offerings from core systems increases the speed of delivery, reduces costs, and supports the security that is vital for consumer trust in financial institutions.
Insurance
The development of some of the systems that are critical for the day-to-day running of insurance organizations was completed as long ago as the 1970s and 1980s. These systems support core business applications and functions but lack the capabilities of modern, cloud-based solutions.
As these systems are not always obsolete in purpose, it is beneficial to integrate them with more modern technology. An example of this is Legal & General’s long-term modernization and transformation plan, which has seen them use the OpenLegacy Hub SaaS platform to combine their mainframe with private and public cloud systems to improve performance.
Retail
Legacy systems for retail businesses can include inventory and supply chain management, point of sale (POS) systems, order processing, and categorizing of sensitive customer data. These systems are vital but can reduce business competitiveness if they are slow, lacking in security, or incompatible with modern technology.
Monoprix used OpenLegacy’s digital transformation tools to convert batch processes to CICS transactions and replace outdated screens with modern interfaces. The result of this modernization is that changes to the company’s online catalog, which previously took up to a day or more, now appear in real-time.
Manufacturing
Well-established manufacturing businesses use legacy systems for mainframes, applications, databases, ERP, and more. Although these businesses will be reliant on these systems for day-to-day processes, it can be challenging to get them to ‘talk to’ modern technologies.
A digital transformation platform can help bypass complex architecture and mobilize core systems so that they can work with innovative digital services, allowing businesses to capitalize on the advantages of modern solutions.
Benefits of legacy system digital transformations
There are numerous benefits to committing to digital transformation for your business’s legacy systems. These can include:
Increased operational efficiency and productivity
Using digital solutions alongside core systems allows companies to increase the ease of use for employees. Data from different company components, including analytics, project management, and core business systems, can be consolidated in real-time in the cloud. As well as improving accessibility, this increases business efficiency and productivity.
Improved customer experience and satisfaction
Improved customer experience and satisfaction are among the leading reasons for companies’ digital transformations, especially in customer-centric and customer-facing areas, such as retail, healthcare, and government.
Any technology that makes systems easier to use, more time-efficient, and more reliable for customers is bound to be favored by organizations and enterprises dealing with the public in any capacity. If legacy systems cannot work with these new technologies, an integration platform can help.
Better decision-making through data-driven insights
One undeniable upside to digitizing systems is the ease of tracking metrics and analyzing data from a variety of sources.
Being able to easily and reliably organize and sort through data from legacy systems allows you to use real-time insights to achieve better results by honing your processes and strategies.
Enhanced agility and flexibility in adapting to changing business needs
Agility and flexibility are vital for business success in the fast-paced and ever-changing digital age. Unfortunately, legacy systems just cannot keep up.
Slow, inflexible, on-premises systems prevent businesses from being able to notice opportunities in the market, chances to innovate, and ways to grow. This results in companies losing their competitive edge and stagnating. Digital transformation opens up the opportunity to engage with new ideas, new competitors, and new processes.
Ideal features to look for in a digital transformation platform
The following are our top features to look out for when choosing your digital transformation platform:
Cloud-based
Digitalization goes hand in hand with cloud-based platforms. The cloud (and cloud computing) provides a service-based, on-demand model. It automates different processes for a seamless operations system, which enables digital transformation.
With a digital transformation focused on cloud modernization, you can build an infrastructure that fits your changing business needs without wasting any time or money on outsourcing to IT specialists or upskilling your IT staff to handle complex systems.
Ease of deployment
Since the digital organization transformation process requires extensive testing, an easy deployment platform is an important characteristic to look for.
The platform you choose should be able to integrate easily with your other applications and allow swift updates throughout your business.
Your platform of choice should also be able to build and release at scale.
Mobile responsive
Mobile phones are no longer only used for communication. With ever-increasing uses, from shopping to photography to banking, it is vital that digital business platforms are mobile-friendly.
By choosing platforms with a mobile-responsive approach, you also benefit from user interface designs that are geared toward smartphones.
Low code
Low code is a recent software development method that requires little or no coding. It includes drag-and-drop models and removes the need for manual coding using complicated programming languages, such as Python and R.
This results in quicker application delivery and allows users without a degree in computer science or intricate programming abilities to build websites.
Users can also create emails and applications for different purposes, meaning low code is a no-brainer when it comes to your platform for digital transformation.
Agile software development
This is crucial to avoid your digital transition platform becoming redundant and out-of-date.
Agile software development is the process of continuous upgrading and improvement based on feedback received.
At the core of any successful digitization process, innovation and experimentation are also key features of agile software development.
How OpenLegacy can support digital transformation applications
With its wide range of tools and technologies, OpenLegacy enables quick and efficient modernization and integration of legacy systems to support businesses' digital transformation strategies.
Legacy modernization through API, hybrid, and cloud integration, can future-proof organizations with improved productivity, operational efficiency, customer experience, data-driven decision-making, security, and flexibility.
Get in touch to find out how OpenLegacy can seamlessly upgrade your business operations and enable legacy systems to be leveraged in combination with modern digital systems.
FAQs about digital transformation platforms
What is infrastructure in digital transformation?
Infrastructure in digital transformation refers to the technological parts, including hardware, software, and networking systems, that are needed to implement and deploy digital solutions for the optimization of processes and automation of workflows.
Digital transformation infrastructure includes cloud computing platforms, servers, databases, networks, and other hardware and software components.
What is the difference between digital transformation and modernization?
Often used interchangeably, digital transformation and modernization are actually two different processes. Digital transformation covers fundamental changes to how a company operates through the adoption and integration of digital technologies.
In comparison, modernization is the process of updating or replacing legacy systems with newer technologies to improve efficiency, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. It can include updating hardware, software, or both, as well as processes like cloud migration.
Simply put, digital transformation is about creating value and driving growth by implementing innovative digital technologies, while modernization is about improving existing systems and processes through updates or replacement.
How can digital transformation improve sustainability?
Digital transformation can improve sustainability in several ways. Digitizing and automating processes can allow businesses to go paperless, minimizing paper consumption, saving trees, and reducing waste and emissions from transportation and recycling. Carbon emissions are lowered further by remote work, which also reduces commuting and travel.
Another benefit of digital transformation is improved visibility and traceability. This can help businesses optimize energy usage with smart building management systems and energy-efficient IT infrastructure, as well as identify inefficiencies and spot opportunities for improvement across transparent supply chains.
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