We are living in the digital age of electric vehicles, same-day delivery, and virtual experience adventures from the comfort of our couch. It’s exciting to see how much technology has impacted our work and our daily lives. However, not everyone is modernized and up-to-speed. Manufacturers around the world are mired in operational complexity and technical debt from multiple, disparate legacy systems that can’t keep up with business needs and constant changes. And, in today’s virtual and remote-focused world, people need to be able to work efficiently and stay connected more than ever before.
Manufacturers have been improving their value streams for decades, and most have already embarked on their digital transformation journeys to streamline processes, unify disparate teams, deliver better business outcomes, and improve customer and employee experiences. But it’s challenging for businesses to figure out how they can transform and modernize without disrupting their powerful ERP, CRM, and other legacy systems. As called out in the whitepaper, “Supercharge your enterprise resource planning (ERP) investments,”
- 80% of customers are unhappy with their current ERP.
- 60% of ERP projects fail.
- 90% of ERP projects fail to deliver any measurable ROI.
- 40% of enterprises fail to achieve more than half of the expected benefits.
The digital transformation journey is exciting and important for Industry 4.0, business growth and competitive advantage, but how realistic is it? And why isn’t everyone doing it faster? Some enterprises are so bogged down managing the day-to-day operations or keeping the lights on supporting and maintaining existing applications that they can’t spare the time and money needed to modernize their processes and systems. Others don’t have the resources or expertise to make the necessary upgrades and changes. The end goal is appealing, but the journey to get there seems daunting, expensive, and very (very) time-consuming.
Supercharge your enterprise resource planning (ERP) investments
Learn how to efficiently maximize your current software capabilities while also modernizing with intelligent tech
Myth: Digital transformations are time-consuming and expensive
What’s stopping manufacturers from modernizing? Traditional solutions that involve multi-year, multi-million-dollar projects that follow a waterfall mentality and require a massive overhaul of legacy systems without the expertise and support to back it up. This approach sets both business and IT up for failure. Enterprises that attempt to modernize this way are faced with several obstacles, such as, lack of executive buy-in, skillset shortages, minimal experience and understanding of project challenges and complexities, and user adoption.
As technological advances continue, manufacturers need to grow and adapt in parallel. They need an ERP modernization plan that is affordable, efficient, and proven to succeed. Rather than attempting to replace massive and ingrained legacy systems, enterprises can take a simpler approach that connects their existing legacy system with newer low-code applications. This path embraces the more flexible agile methodology, enabling organizations to pivot at any given time, and empowers traditionally disparate business and IT teams to better communicate and collaborate with each other.
Repurposing legacy systems for the future
Pega is a leader in simplifying the digital transformation journey for enterprises around the world. Pega Infinity™ integrates seamlessly with legacy systems to create intuitive, flexible, and user-friendly interfaces. The Pega Platform™ architecture shields users from the tedious processes that are traditionally overwhelming and discouraging for project teams. This agile approach focuses on delivering a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP), supports business process owners, and builds for change from start to finish by taking a low-code, model-driven approach. Pega uses these models to generate the underlying code behind the scenes, which is a win-win for non-technical businesspeople and overworked IT groups.
Pega Platform architecture
Pega’s patented and transformative solution leverages the existing investments made in ERP and legacy systems. Rather than ripping out and replacing them, the Pega Platform makes them better by accelerating the digital transformation journey and orchestrating work from end to end across functional silos and harmonizing disjointed processes and disparate back-end systems. Over time, you could also rationalize the IT portfolio and lower TCO (total cost of ownership) and technical debt by eliminating redundant or end-of-life solutions. This reduces one-off point solutions, “shadow IT", and manual workarounds (Excel, emails, etc.).
Your digital transformation journey, reimagined
The future is here! This is an exciting time that doesn’t have to involve tedious processes that discourage and inhibit growth. Manufacturers can easily access the support and expertise they need to optimize their processes more efficiently and successfully by creating an agile orchestration layer that brings together their people, processes, data, and legacy systems. Instead of wasting your time and money modifying or replacing monolithic systems, experience the best of both worlds with an innovative agile platform that will continue to adapt into the future.
Learn More:
- Ready to begin your digital transformation journey? Check out this video to transform your manufacturing operations.
- Find out how Siemens improved efficiency by 80% on the Pega Platform™.