Many companies choose not to upgrade their legacy contact manager or CRM system to a new one. Instead, they update their existing system.
Here are five reasons why organizations stick with outdated technology.
Familiarity
Even if end users aren’t entirely enamored with the current system, they are trained on it and are used to how it works. The administrator knows how to manage the application and support users. A CRM upgrade means staying with familiar functionality, whereas there are unknowns when moving to a new system. Training and change management must be considered for a new CRM system.
Lack of Research Time
Many people involved with CRM decisions may not have time to research alternatives to their current system during their busy workday.
With many time pressures in today’s corporate environment, staying with the existing system is often perceived as the easier decision. The CRM buying process takes time and effort.
Existing Integrations
When a contact manager or CRM system has been in place for many years, it may have one or more integrations with legacy systems and may also be tied to several third-party tools, such as quotation software.
Switching to a new system usually means rebuilding those integrations and/or finding substitutes for add-on products that work with the legacy system.
Taking on Subscription Costs
Switching to a new CRM system usually has a higher short-term cost than staying with an existing contact manager or CRM solution.
While the only licensing cost for an existing system may be an annual software maintenance and technical support fee, moving to a new system may mean a higher annual fee or an upfront cost for purchased software.
Data Migration
Performing a CRM update vs. changing to a new system means no data to migrate.
An update is mainly at the application level—the data structure stays mostly the same, except for some added system tables and fields.
Migrating data to a new CRM system can be expensive, as data needs to be cleaned up, transformed, and often normalized.
Potential Downsides to an Existing CRM Update
Sometimes, updates can be expensive yet provide only minor incremental improvements despite expectations that an upgrade will add much new functionality. There can even be cases where an upgrade creates more problems than it solves.
With a legacy CRM solution, another upgrade will be needed later. So, an upgrade today may be just “kicking the can down the road.”
The biggest downside to not upgrading to a new CRM system may be the opportunity cost of not moving to a system that can provide significant additional business benefits.
It’s often worth the time for management to at least understand what a new system can do for their organization.
Why Upgrade?
An existing system must sometimes be replaced to support newer versions of office suites and other related software. Companies also upgrade their CRM environment to take advantage of new features and functionality provided by the vendor.
Moving to a new CRM system can mean the end of sometimes costly updates, as contemporary CRM vendors transparently upgrade multi-tenant, hosted solutions in the background.
For companies currently using a legacy client/server solution, switching to a new CRM system means easier, browser-based access, eliminating much IT support time.
Finally, newer CRM systems’ more robust database functionality can allow for more efficient business process management and even incorporate more business process automation into the CRM realm.
