As companies across the world embrace digital transformation, it has become clear that a suboptimal technology infrastructure is a not only a barrier to successful digital transformation, but also a financial burden on the business.
“As with financial debt, there are measures and methods that can be followed to control and mitigate the risk of technical debt,” says Heinrich de Leeuw, MD, Seidor in Africa.“Technical debt is the additional expense and loss of agility incurred in a business because of past decisions made to save time or money when adopting new IT systems or maintaining existing ones. Delivering any digital transformation project depends on effective collaboration and business communication, but when finance, sales, marketing, and HR cannot understand one-another, the journey can become extremely challenging.”
It happens when systems aren’t properly connected or when programming is complicated. This is due to a multitude of factors, including inefficiencies, time to market concerns, and the use of outdated software, to name a few.
Despite the negative connotations, in many cases technical debt is inevitable and is part of any IT maintenance process that must accommodate disparate systems and fast changing business needs.
“Technical debt isn’t inherently bad but, like financial debt, it needs to be monitored, measured, and managed. The longer technical debt is left unattended, the greater the size of the eventual consequence will be,” says De Leeuw.
“Short-term fixes lead to poorer solutions that are not able to support business growth or new functionality.
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The best way to reduce technical debt and undertake a successful digital transformation is to understand what and how much technical debt you have, and then devise a plan that addresses the company’s immediate technology needs whilst preventing new debt from happening.
But companies today do not always have the time, resources and strategies required to pay off their technical debt, or to eliminate it altogether. That’s where innovative solutions can make all the difference.
“Our Express methodology allows businesses to quickly configure their SAP Business One solution to address their most pressing business pain points that often have resulted from the new realities of the market,” says De Leeuw.
By using configurable templates, companies needing to migrate to a new integrated technology architecture can benefit from a framework based on IT best practices – a great place to begin the journey to digital transformation. This approach is available to all types of businesses.
Up to now, the investment and implementation of a smart, fast, and automated system that ensures technical debt is a thing of the past, have been perceived prohibitive for start-ups and small to medium businesses, but Seidor Express, developed by Seidor in Africa, is making this templatised ERP available through a rapid deployment model.
It is easy to rollout, as well as more affordable in these tough times, thanks to a reduced consulting rate and industry configured templates with a defined rollout timeline.
De Leeuw says that their methodology allows businesses to configure their ERP solution to address the most pressing business pain points resulting from the new realities of the market.“It is not always necessary to repay debt. In certain circumstances, finding a new strategy to dealing with things is more cost effective. Instead of trying to fix legacy systems, our clients can quickly benefit from more innovative and modern solutions that are designed to take companies into the future,” concludes De Leeuw.
