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80% of B2B Businesses Are Holding You Back by Legacy eCommerce Systems. Is Yours One of Them?

15 Jan 2025

Mike Patel

Moving on from your existing B2B eCommerce systems will be a difficult decision. After all, you have been using them for a long time. But, if these systems are not contributing to your growth, it’s time to break up.

Legacy systems drain the efficiency of your business operations due to limited scalability, slow performance, lack of customization, poor user experience, and more. Thus, 87% of business leaders said modernization is essential to climb the ladder of success.

Now, a question might hit your mind: how should I know that my existing eCommerce systems are outdated?

Let’s explore the signs that indicate your business needs to adopt modernization.

5 Signs That Indicate Your Existing B2B eCommerce Systems are Outdated

Every B2B eCommerce company encounters a situation where they have to analyze the performance of existing systems in terms of cost, investment, and benefits. If the current systems are holding you back from growing, you need to consider replacing the existing ones with the right ones.

Let’s understand the drawbacks of legacy eCommerce systems.

1. Higher Cost of Maintenance

Innovation and updates in certain technology platforms slow down over time, significantly increasing the maintenance cost of eCommerce systems.

IT decision-makers predicted allocating an average budget of $2.7 million to address the high maintenance costs of legacy systems in 2024.

Higher Maintenance Costs of Legacy B2B eCommerce Systems

Nearly two-thirds of businesses are spending over $2 million to cover the rising maintenance costs of their legacy systems.

After using an eCommerce platform for a long time, companies realize they have spent more on software maintenance than paid for actual software. To keep your system up and running, you spend a considerable amount to maintain the crucial components of legacy solutions. Eventually, the cost of solution maintenance rises significantly.

2. Lower Security Standards

Vendors of an outdated system stop supporting older versions, Hence, when companies encounter critical issues like security breaches, the platform provider won’t be able to provide proper assistance, which results in data loss.

In the case of data assault, data repair is almost impossible in obsolete systems. Legacy systems cannot match the latest security standards, so eventually, you end up operating a system where your data is at risk. Therefore, 50% of organizations consider modernizing legacy systems to increase security.

3. Compatibility Challenges

Due to unscalable and inflexible architecture, organizations experience several compatibility issues in outdated systems including:

Compatibility Challenges in Legacy B2B eCommerce Systems

Data Silos:

When you migrate data from a legacy system to a modern platform, there are chances of data silo due to compatibility differences. Access to accurate and united data is essential to make effective business decisions and define customer-centric strategies.

You have to ask your team to ensure access to unified data. As a result, the employees lose 30% of their weekly hours chasing data.

Lack of Flexibility:

Legacy B2B eCommerce systems run with less flexibility. So, if you add new technology or advanced features, it’s a time-consuming process. Legacy systems have older configurations that are not compatible with modern features. So, after investing so much time and effort, there is no assurance that the new features will function effectively.

Inefficient Resource Utilization:

Due to all of the above challenges, the IT team needs to spend more time and resources on:

Extracting Data From Varied Sources
Migrating the Data to the Legacy Platform
Ensuring Smooth Synchronization of all the Systems

With an inefficient outdated platform, all your team’s efforts are worthless.

4. Lack of Usability

Over time, outdated systems reduce the release of new versions. Consequently, it becomes difficult for your team to operate a system with an outdated user interface and functionality. Most employees waste time figuring out how these systems work and how to use them.

5. Losing Profitability

Finally, you need to check how legacy systems are profitable to your business. To determine this, you should get the answer to some questions that involve:

Do These Systems Serve Their Original Purpose?
What is the Purpose of Continuing Outdated Systems for Your Business?
How Frequently Are You Using Them?
Is There Any Change in the Actual Goal?

Legacy System Modernization – A Proven Approach to Overcome Challenges of B2B Legacy Systems

Though B2B organizations deal with critical challenges for using legacy systems that hamper their overall business efficiency, they are hesitant to adopt modernization. The most common excuses we come across are:

Cost of Optimizing IT Ecosystem
Investing Significant Time and Efforts
The Staff is Comfortable with the Old Systems

Don’t allow such reasons to hold you back from gaining success!

Let ioVista, a leading B2B digital transformation agency help you overcome the challenges caused by obsolete systems.

We analyze the gap between the capabilities of your legacy systems and expectations from internal and external users. Based on the insights, we create a customized strategy for legacy system modernization.

Following a step-by-step process of legacy system modernization, we ensure an efficient upgrade of your system that streamlines your business operations, increases organizational productivity, and reduces operational costs.

Are you ready to modernize your outdated B2B legacy systems? Get in touch with our experts to get a personalized consultation for modernization.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Legacy System Modernization?

Legacy system modernization refers to migrating, updating, re-platforming, and transforming outdated systems into a robust, scalable, and feature-rich environment. By updating your obsolete systems, you can meet changing business needs and the latest technology standards.

Under modernization, you can upgrade legacy systems, platforms, architecture, and infrastructure. Using the latest technologies and development practices, you can boost security, maintainability, and performance of your old platform.

What is the Problem with Legacy Systems?

Your legacy systems are developed using old technologies. Thus, they become incompatible with the latest technologies and business needs. It raises scenarios of operational inefficiencies.

For examples:

With an outdated UI of the obsolete system, it will be difficult for your team to find the required features and functionality that help accomplish their tasks quickly.

Moreover, legacy systems face challenges of a long loading time, a higher frequency of software lag, and more. This harms the operational efficiency of your business.

How Can You Integrate Data From Your Legacy System into the Upgraded One?

To integrate your data with the upgraded system, you can add a service layer on top of the obsolete B2B eCommerce systems. This service layer transforms, validates, and implements business logic to data before moving it to the modernized solution.

Mike Patel

Mike Patel is the Founder and CEO of ioVista, a leading digital commerce agency specializing in eCommerce solutions. With a strong background in business and technology, Mike Patel has been at the forefront of driving digital transformations for businesses. He has successfully navigated the ever-changing landscape of eCommerce, helping companies leverage the power of online platforms to grow their brand, increase revenues, and optimize their digital presence. Under his leadership, ioVista has become a trusted partner with major technology companies: Adobe/Magento, Google, BigCommerce, Shopify, and Yahoo. He is dedicated to staying ahead of industry trends, adopting cutting-edge technologies, and continuously improving strategies to provide clients with a competitive edge. Mike’s commitment to excellence and client satisfaction is evident in every project ioVista undertakes.