A global bank's legacy COBOL system hinders launching new mobile features, impacting revenue and customer satisfaction. This bottleneck isn't just technical - it's a critical business challenge.
This chapter shows how COBOL modernization is a strategic necessity. We'll explore how it drives revenue, improves customer experience, and builds competitive advantage.
We'll move past fear-based discussions of skills gaps to focus on business opportunities, examine modernization's role in digital transformation, and provide a framework for creating an effective modernization strategy.
This chapter explains why modernization matters strategically and provides tools to evaluate and align modernization with business goals.
COBOL modernization isn't just about avoiding system failures and skills shortages. It's a powerful business opportunity to transform legacy systems into growth engines. Modernization drives innovation, enhances customer experiences, and creates lasting competitive advantages.
This requires a strategic mindset shift. View modernization as an investment in your future, not a necessary evil. Like renovating a historic building, the initial costs yield a valuable, revenue-generating asset. Modern COBOL systems become agile platforms that accelerate growth while strengthening compliance, security, and market responsiveness.
Modernization directly fuels revenue growth. Modernized systems can seamlessly integrate with modern sales platforms, digital marketing automation tools, and mobile applications, expanding market reach and boosting sales. It enables faster product development cycles, allowing you to capture market share more quickly. Improved data access provides actionable insights for targeted marketing campaigns and hyper-personalized customer experiences, significantly boosting conversion rates. For example:
An insurance company’s COBOL system handles policy administration but lacks real-time data integration with its customer portal. This results in a 24-48 hour delay in policy updates being reflected online, leading to customer frustration and increased call center volume. Agents lack a 360-degree view of customer interactions, hindering proactive service and upsell opportunities.
Modernizing the COBOL system and integrating it with Salesforce using real-time API calls enables agents to access policy information directly within the CRM, providing a unified view of the customer. Furthermore, customers gain self-service access to policy information and personalized recommendations through a revamped mobile app. This could lead to a projected 8% reduction in customer churn and a 12% uplift in cross-sell revenue within 18 months.
Quantify the business opportunities that modernization unlocks. Identify specific areas for improved customer acquisition, increased sales, and enhanced customer retention. Develop a robust financial model projecting the return on investment (ROI) of modernization. This model should include:
Focus on tangible business outcomes, not just technical metrics. What This Means for Your Business: Modernization creates new revenue streams and drives business growth. Don’t just update technology; generate significant business value.
Customer experience is a critical differentiator in today’s market. Customers demand seamless, personalized interactions across all touchpoints. Outdated COBOL systems often fail to meet these expectations, leading to customer frustration and lost business. Modernization transforms these systems into customer-centric platforms.