Jenna Lyszak - Consultant, eCommerce Practice
Is your business currently running on the most efficient PIM software? Although legacy systems have a multitude of benefits, they are lacking in comparison to newly advanced systems like Salsify PXM. In this blog, we will discuss the negative impacts incurred by maintaining a legacy system and how Salsify PXM provides one centralized solution.
Despite new and innovative digital transformation drives, many organizations still run on legacy systems. A legacy system is an outdated computing software or hardware that is still in use, but its older technological makeup will not allow it to perform with new technologies. Generally, legacy systems no longer have support and maintenance and are limited in terms of growth. Organizations who continue to use legacy systems often do so because the legacy software is essential for business processes and continues to perform the basic functions needed. While these systems can continue to perform the same functions for these organizations, there are also many potential risks and issues to consider:
Security Risks
Productivity and Efficiency
Compatibility Issues
Data Silos
Maintenance Costs
Environment for Lack of Information
Security Risks/Productivity and Efficiency
Legacy systems are inherently old, outdated, and may no longer be supported by the vendor or company that created them. Because of this, they no longer receive updates or patches in order to decrease vulnerabilities, and in turn, increase the risk of compliance issues like HIPAA, PCI, SOX, etc. Issues in security and compliance will further open your network to the risk of being compromised, simply due to running a legacy system. Additionally, legacy systems were designed and implemented at a time when business processes were less contemporary, increasing their risk of failure. The consequences of this downtime can have serious financial implications, loss of sales, a loss in employee productivity, and damage to brand image/loyalty.
Compatibility Issues and Data Silos
Another problem with using legacy systems is that ‘old’ and ‘new’ technology can rarely work together in unison. Legacy systems are standalone and are not designed to integrate with new software. Although this may have been fine when the system was first implemented, as businesses grow this technology will be incompatible with newer technology that is also essential to business processes. Therefore, each legacy system is its own data silo. Organizations that use these legacy systems will be unable to realize the new capabilities of modern solutions and technology. In addition, while your legacy systems prohibit the integration or additional capabilities of new technologies, chances are your competitors are adapting to new technologies, further resulting in a loss of customer satisfaction and revenue.
Maintenance Costs and Lack of Information
One of the largest issues with legacy systems comes from the cost it takes to maintain them over time. Additional costs such as increasing security capabilities, maintaining upgrades, and unanticipated downtime can all have serious financial implications on a company. An article by the Financial Times reported “the cost of maintaining these often ageing and unwieldy systems eats up three-quarters of…IT spending.” As a result, moving your legacy system to a newer technology can ease cost implications and reduce future financial risks. Finally, legacy systems create an environment for lack of information. New technologies are able to capture data insights as well as improve the speed and agility of business processes, a capability that outdated systems simply do not have. As your business grows you’ll need a system, like Salsify ProductXM, that can evolve with the changing technological needs and business processes of your organization - not stunt your growth. So how exactly can you successfully migrate your legacy systems to Salsify and why?
Why Salsify?
Salsify’s Product Experience Management (ProductXM or PXM) has the unique capabilities required to win on the digital shelf. Salsify’s PXM provides a solution to easily manage and optimize your product content on one platform by utilizing “a fully customizable product information management system, the ability to automatically customize retailer-specific content before syndication and meet ever-changing requirements with a continuously adaptive system of record.” Experience less system failures, compliance issues or lack of integration capabilities with the following Salsify PXM components:
Salsify Activation: Manage, syndicate and optimize channel-specific product content.
Enhanced Content: Build and publish authentic, engaging below-the-fold brand experiences that increase conversion rates.
Digital Catalogs: Share customized, always up-to-date sets of products with internal and external users in a secure and user-friendly way.
Automated Insights: Powerful, closed-loop product page analytics that allow brands to measure the impact of the product content they syndicate to the digital shelf.
Salsify DTC: Manage a Single Source of Truth for 1P, 3P, and DTC Product Content.
Salsify Orders and Inventory: Centralized commerce hub for brands to manage product content, inventory, and sales orders at scale across all platforms.
To learn more about these modules please visit Salsify.com
Best Practices to Migrate Your Legacy System
The first step in any successful data migration is to ensure your current data is protected and can be extracted securely. Ensuring your data can be extracted securely will avoid siloing, errors, and data duplication, among other errors. Next, data within a legacy system oftentimes cannot directly map to the new system, meaning data transformation and mapping must occur. Once your current data is secure and formatted properly, the data must be validated. Cleaning and validating your data will make certain that all duplicates, incomplete data, and errors are removed before importing into the new system. Finally, a sample set of data can be imported into the system to check that all data is valid, maps properly, and can be tested for additional issues. Salsify empowers your organization with all the necessary tools and processes to complete a successful integration and the above actions.
Here to Help - Salsify Consultants
Not only does Salsify have industry-leading capabilities and processes, but Salsify makes data migration even easier with the help of highly qualified implementation consultants. As a leading Salsify Partner, Aleysian consultants work directly with our clients/teams in order to ensure successful data migration and system implementation. Our certified consultants ease the transition to a new system by:
Guiding the extraction of existing data
Formatting existing data to match Salsify’s format
Cleansing Data
Configuring a custom data model that suits organizational needs
Importing existing data into Salsify
Importing and Linking Digital Assets
Maintaining all organization's retail channels
Confirming valid/complete data is syndicated to the corresponding retailers
Training clients on the proper Salsify functionalities
Ensuring a proper handoff at the end of implementation
Helping clients to win on the digital shelf
Continuously training and innovating with new capabilities/solutions
Overall, when it comes to using a legacy system, the risks outweigh the benefits. Avoid the insurmountable security risks, financial implications, and overall productivity loss of outdated systems by migrating your data to Salsify’s ProductXM. See an increase in your productivity, efficiency and data management. With the help of Aleysian’s Salsify consultants, ensure your data migration is smooth and successful. Win on the digital shelf.
Ready to make the switch? Our experienced team of consultants is here to help, please contact us here.