Navigating Legacy Systems With Low Code

Legacy systems may form the backbone of your company’s IT, but they can hinder growth as they age and fall behind modern technological advancements. This frustrates your employees and customers while stifling innovation. 

Many businesses stick with outdated systems because overhauling or replacing them is expensive, complex, and disruptive. However, you don’t have to start from scratch to modernize legacy systems or integrate them with newer, more agile technologies. 

Low code development provides a fast, cost-effective, and less disruptive way to upgrade your IT systems. This guide explores navigating legacy systems with low code development and how this approach can help modernize your business.

Short on Time? Here’s a Brief Overview

• Legacy systems can reduce productivity, increase costs, and complicate regulatory compliance. However, they’re often challenging to upgrade because they’re essential to critical business processes.

• Low code development offers a fast, cost-effective, and flexible way to integrate, extend, redeploy, or migrate legacy systems with minimal disruption.

• Low code platforms offer solutions for all industries, including financial services, energy, retail, manufacturing, and healthcare.

• Collaboration between business and IT employees helps ensure successful legacy system modernization with low code platforms.

The Legacy System Dilemma

As any business owner who’s struggled with outdated software can tell you, legacy systems can be problematic. Here’s why:

1. They inflate costs and decrease productivity by forcing employees to do work manually that modern systems automate. 

   For example, an outdated HR system may require administrators to manually duplicate employee details across your payroll system, employee directory, and other critical software. This wastes time and increases the likelihood of expensive errors, like incorrect payroll runs. 
   
   

2. They limit your business’s ability to adapt to market changes. 

   For instance, a retailer aiming to reach new audiences through omnichannel selling (combining digital and in-person sales) might find its existing software supports only in-person transactions. 

   Likewise, an energy company looking to incorporate renewable sources like solar and wind could face challenges because its system can’t handle highly variable energy generators.
   
   

3. They can threaten your business’s ability to comply with regulations. 

   For example, in the financial industry, outdated systems can result in data silos that hinder anti-money laundering efforts. The potential consequences could be costly.

   
   Despite these issues, legacy systems are often indispensable because they continue to work well and solve problems. Many companies rely heavily on legacy software for basic operations, sales, or safety. However, these same critical systems can keep your company from pursuing new lines of business and waste your employees’ time.

   Modernizing these systems also presents a challenge. Attempting to update them risks damaging critical software and leaving your business worse off than when you started. Today’s software-as-a-service environment has also made modernization more costly and difficult, as CLEVR solution architect Jeroen Appel points out:

   “Legacy systems are increasingly being proactively updated by the vendor. Every customization in this system will make upgrades more expensive, harder to test, and more risky. Additionally, customizations are mostly done in either complex high-code plugins or vendor-specific languages.”

   All of this makes building a replacement system from scratch too costly and time-consuming for most companies.  Even if you have the budget, transferring legacy data and training your workforce on a new system can be overwhelming.

   But that’s where low code comes in.
   
   

How Low Code Development Can Help

Low code platforms offer a solution to the legacy system dilemma. They enable you to build automated workflows and integrations with little programming.

Instead of coding, low code software offers a visual interface and customizable templates to help you build apps and integrations. You can drag and drop inputs, triggers, and outputs to create an automated workflow or build a mobile app for customers by arranging pre-built elements on a template. More advanced applications can incorporate code, making low code platforms endlessly extensible, but no coding is required for many legacy software updates.

This means anyone in your company, including semi-technical and non-technical employees, can take ownership of improving outdated systems and build the solutions needed to solve business challenges. You no longer have to bring in developers for every project, which saves time and money.

Involving non-technical employees in development also results in better business outcomes. As Louis Balla, a NetSuite enterprise resource planning (ERP) software expert at Nuage Consulting, points out: 

“An essential advantage of low code environments is the ability to involve non-technical stakeholders in the development process…Hands-on participation [leads] to higher user adoption rates and substantially reduced training periods post-implementation.”

Low code development is particularly effective for integrating legacy systems with modern applications. Your employees can easily design workflows that import data from legacy systems or automate tasks that previously had to be completed manually. For example, the compliance team at a financial services company could use low code automation to seamlessly transfer data from multiple disconnected systems into a single database, thereby eliminating data silos.

Importantly, these low code solutions can extend your business’s digital capabilities without impacting critical functionality in your legacy systems. It prevents significant business disruptions and reduces the time to launch new IT products.

Strategies for Using Low Code to Modernize Legacy Systems

Your company can take several approaches to modernizing legacy systems with low code platforms.

Integrate
One of the most effective ways to use low code development is to integrate legacy systems with modern technologies. You can incorporate data from legacy systems into automated workflows, AI-driven analyses, and any new software your business adopts. Low code integration leaves your legacy system intact, so there’s little to no risk of disrupting critical IT infrastructure.

Low code software platforms offer hundreds of pre-made integrations, which makes connecting legacy systems with today’s popular business software easy. For example, Mendix offers integrations for ERP platforms like SAP and Oracle and business intelligence platforms like Microsoft Power BI.

Integration can also enable you to share data between platforms that were previously unable to communicate. As CLEVR team lead Robert Huisintveld explains: 

“With low code, you can invoke and use multiple data silos in one application. It allows you to connect and optimise processes without having to merge the underlying data sources first.”

That makes low code a powerful way to break down data silos created by disconnected legacy systems.

Extend
Another way to achieve legacy application modernization is to use low code development to develop modules and workflows that plug into your existing software system. It simply extends the capabilities of your legacy system without modifying its core codebase.

Extension is often combined with integration. For example, you could extend a system’s functionality by integrating other standalone software to conduct a data transformation. The transformed data can then be sent back to your legacy system for use in downstream processes.

Redeploy
Redeployment involves moving certain operational features of your legacy IT systems to the cloud. This enables you to take advantage of cloud computing's key advantages, such as more scalable storage and processing power, enhanced data security, and reduced infrastructure costs.

Redeployment can also involve low code development to run computing-intensive processes, like data analysis, in the cloud. You can then use new cloud-based AI models or other cloud-based software to process your data. You can also redeploy a specific piece of legacy software, like a CRM system, into the cloud to make it more secure and to free up space on your legacy IT infrastructure.

Migrate
Legacy system migration involves moving data from your existing software onto a more modern system. It’s a way to replace the functionality of outdated technologies without interrupting their core processes.

For example, you can use a migration strategy to forward data from an old customer information system to a new customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Your legacy system can continue operating and automatically forward any new data to the modern CRM platform. This way, you get all the benefits of a more sophisticated software system without replacing your business’s web forms and other channels for collecting customer data.

Migration can also involve moving data from your legacy system into the cloud for long-term storage. It’s less expensive than storing data on your own IT infrastructure, and you can scale up your business’s cloud storage space without purchasing any new computing equipment. In addition, warehousing data in the cloud makes it more accessible for remote and field service employees.

Real-World Applications Across Industries

Low code development can help companies in all major industries address their legacy systems and adapt to changing business demands. Let’s look at some real-world applications below.

Financial services
Many financial services businesses face challenges complying with increasing regulations around anti-money laundering, financial reserves, customer privacy, and more. Meeting these regulatory requirements requires accurate real-time reporting and automated compliance checks to prevent costly mistakes. 

Low code development platforms can help by automatically importing data from disparate legacy systems, breaking down data silos, and enabling compliance employees to generate up-to-date, comprehensive reports. These platforms also help build automated compliance checks, eliminating much of the manual work involved in approving account applications or managing fraud claims.

Additionally, low code development can integrate legacy systems with modern fintech tools, such as a consumer-facing payments app or an online loan application system. This is especially powerful for banks and other consumer-facing businesses looking to enhance the client experience. 

Energy and utilities
Energy and utilities companies face a rapidly changing market as new forms of energy generation come online and regulations around grid management shift. Many energy providers rely on outdated—and sometimes even analog—legacy systems to manage infrastructure and balance grid loads. This makes adapting difficult. 

Low code applications can address this by empowering energy providers to create new asset management systems that integrate with existing devices or automate data collection from the grid using Internet of Things (IoT)-connected devices. 

Businesses can also use low code platforms to build and scale hybrid energy management solutions. These solutions can merge legacy systems for fossil fuel-powered generation sources with new renewable sources, like solar and wind farms.

In addition, energy companies can use low code approaches to quickly update system controls as regulations change and automate compliance checks. This makes it easier to adapt to shifting energy policies while minimizing operational disruptions.

Retail
Retailers are often held back by legacy systems when trying to roll out new omnichannel shopping experiences to keep up with changing consumer preferences.

Low code development enables retail businesses to integrate new sales channels with legacy pricing management, inventory management, and payment processing systems. Sales teams can be involved to ensure customer experiences are personalized and consistent across each channel.

Low code platforms are especially valuable for retail businesses considering creating (or upgrading) consumer-facing mobile apps. The visual design interfaces and templates are ideal for app development and enable rapid prototyping to help retailers launch their apps faster.

Manufacturing
Manufacturing businesses can see significant productivity increases and cost reductions by integrating IoT devices into their operations. However, legacy systems don’t support digital monitoring devices, preventing companies from using them. 

Low code platforms allow for seamless integration of IoT devices into legacy processes without costly development. They also offer a straightforward way to leverage IoT devices to optimize manufacturing lines, monitor equipment for preventative maintenance, and automate quality control processes.

Just as important, low code solutions don’t require overhauling legacy systems—which are often critical for production lines to run safely. Steve Payerle, president of managed technology services company Next Level Technologies, describes the potential of low code development for manufacturing businesses:

“We worked with a manufacturing client where we employed low code tools to improve their system’s operational efficiency without replacing the entire infrastructure. This not only ensured cost-effectiveness but also maintained business continuity…This approach has consistently reduced implementation times and increased system usage across our client base.”

Healthcare
Healthcare providers face overlapping challenges related to increasing demand for health services, shortages of qualified medical professionals, and rising costs.

Low code platforms can help healthcare systems introduce automations to eliminate manual processes such as data entry and sharing medical records. They can also integrate different healthcare platforms while meeting the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s (HIPAA) security and privacy requirements. In turn, this reduces the number of systems healthcare providers need to navigate.

As AI plays a more significant role in healthcare, businesses can also use low code platforms to create AI-powered applications that ease the burden on providers.

Overcoming Barriers to Low Code Adoption

Despite the advantages of low code development for application creation, some businesses hesitate to use this approach to improve their legacy systems. 

Some are concerned about security or scalability. Others face skepticism from their IT employees who prefer traditional, full-code solutions yet have limited bandwidth to implement the necessary changes. 

The truth is that low code solutions make legacy systems more secure and more scalable, not less. They offer granular settings to control data access and sharing while encrypting unprotected data within legacy systems. As Steve Payerle notes:

“Many small businesses risk data breaches by relying on outdated infrastructures. Through our managed IT services, we’ve helped clients implement low code solutions that bolster security protocols.”

At the same time, low code solutions are highly flexible and easy to scale as your business grows. They offer the potential to integrate with almost any business software, plus empower employees to act as citizen developers to create the workflows they need to be maximally productive.

To skepticism, clearly communicate these benefits to your stakeholders. Also, ensure the low code platform you select represents a collaboration between business and IT from the start. Begin by having non-technical business users design workflows or app prototypes using visual tools that require no technical expertise. Then, work with your IT department to customize and improve the product.

Future-Readiness with CLEVR

Ready to confront your legacy systems and pursue digital transformation through low code? CLEVR is here to help. 

CLEVR can serve as a strategic partner to help you save time, reduce costs, and adapt to rapid changes in your business environment using low code development.

The company brings decades of experience, industry-specific insights, and proven methodologies to ensure its solutions are precisely what your business needs to thrive—not just right now but well into the future. CLEVR also provides end-to-end support for modernizing legacy systems, from identifying digitization opportunities to building custom solutions and helping you scale systems as your business grows.

To learn more about how CLEVR can help you navigate your business’s legacy systems with low code, check out these customer success stories.

Final Thoughts

Legacy systems can cost your business and limit your ability to adapt to a changing market—but they can be challenging to update since they’re often crucial to business operations. 

Low code development provides the answer. It enables you to modernize legacy systems through integrations, extended capabilities, and automations while empowering your employees to build the solutions they need to address real business challenges.

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