Darryl is the new CIO of a wholesale distributor charged with modernizing his company's IT infrastructure. His company operations revolve around a legacy ERP application: a well-oiled processing workhorse. However, his internal legacy systems need modernization to leverage current technologies that provide a competitive edge.
To date, Darryl estimates that his company has spent over $1.2 million in it's current legacy ERP software investment (license fees, annual maintenance, installation, customization, and integration). In addition, several satellite applications and internal databases have also been built on ERP-extracted data as well. It amounts to lots of dependencies have been constructed off of the legacy ERP software.
After reviewing options for modernization, including full replacement of the legacy ERP platform, Darryl is left scratching his head with some questions:
- How does he modernize his platforms without costing an "arm and a leg"?
- How can his "green screen" legacy interface with limited information per screen be made more modern?
- How can he make his employees work more productively as soon as possible?
- How can our company's software engineers interact with the legacy ERP platform database and applications via a modern extensible API?
- How do we modernize without forcing us to "take a wrecking ball" to our existing ERP investment and moving to a completely different solution?
After careful consideration, Darryl finds that the numbers just don't add up to take the "wrecking ball" approach to ERP modernization. He figured that would be the case. "If it's not broke, why fix it?" he says. "If we started from scratch with a completely new ERP platform, we felt like we had to take two steps back in order to take one step forward to modernize. It just didn't make sense for our business. We liked how things were working with regards to our legacy application. We fine tuned our operation over the ERP application. We just needed to build on our preexisting investment with modernization."
How can they modernize their legacy systems quickly and build on their pre-existing investment?"
Darryl reviewed several third-party modernization solutions: GUI development tools to modernize the interface; real-time hubs to facilitate web services over his IBM i server; robot automation tools; and new modern web-based apps for sales quoting. The problem is, they are not all completely integrated with his legacy ERP platform so training and integration costs will be high and time consuming.
What approach is best for his company? Enter My Order Point. Darryl learned about a "360° modernization solution" called My Order Point. My Order Point modernizes the legacy ERP user experience by providing an integrated IBM i client along with several real-time ERP Integrated Add-on Apps to get to his data faster. It also includes an extensible API-based real-time hub for web integration to his legacy ERP application.
My Order Point's unique workspace beautifies the legacy applications screen with it's proprietary AI called Legacy Beautify™ and also provides an integrated data entry robot. All without requiring third-party GUI development tools or application integration middleware! With My Order Point, customizations made to his legacy ERP application screens automatically appear within My Order Point's beautified user experience.
My Order Point also includes several Advanced Add-on Apps like Advanced Order Entry and robust fast single screen inquiries for Orders, Invoices, Purchase Orders and Inventory that utilize a more expansive screen presentation. These Add-on Apps work in real-time with his ERP legacy application through proprietary connectors that have been pre-mapped to his legacy platform by My Order Point.
The My Order Point Workspace's called Enterprise+ Robot™ provides data entry automation to his Order Entry staff can save time when manually entering large orders into his legacy ERP. A large order that usually took 2 hours to complete now gets finished in just a few minutes using the data entry robot that enters many lines at one copied from a Excel spreadsheet!
For his web savvy IT staff, My Order Point provides an extensive API (XML and/or JSON) of several micro-services pre-mapped to the legacy ERP platform. This means that we were able to hire web programmers to work with our ERP data in real-time using My Order Point's real-time hub, Enterprise+ Connector™, right away!
My Order Point's real-time hub provides 70+ micro-services and includes the ability for Darryl's team to create their own API services utilizing it's secure real-time application Alexandra Framework™. The hub saves IT development dollars and reduces the need to hire only legacy programmers familiar with the legacy ERP data and program structures.
What this all means is that Darryl's company can provide accurate real-time pricing, inventory, and order status from this secure hub to authorized employees, customers, and suppliers. The real-time integration removed a lot of data sync issues between his website and his legacy ERP platform as his new website interacts in real-time with his ERP application via Enterprise+ Connector™ services providing accurate pricing and order status.
With My Order point, Darryl was able to modernize his company literally overnight. No overhaul. No wrecking ball required! Just building on what his company already owned and now modernized to allow for better user and customer experiences while saving money at the same time.
Darryl can now do more with less and enabled to further maximize ROI from modernized technology moving forward and he didn't need several separate modernization solutions to accomplish this. Just one: My Order Point.
Click here to learn more about how your company can benefit from our complete modernization solution for legacy ERP users.