Managing old and new tech applications – some of which are decades old or written in now-defunct programming languages – is a mammoth task. How to address it?

Getting different IT systems and programmes to dovetail with one another is a challenge at the best of times and can become particularly challenging in the wake of corporate M&A deals where firms with very different systems come together. As a result, interoperability, to use that clunky word, is critical. 

To discuss these issues is James Wooster, who is chief operating officer of Glue24, a London, New York and Sofia-based software and services vendor working with wealth management companies such as JP Morgan. The editors of this news service are pleased to share views of outside contributors and invite readers to respond. This publication does not necessarily share all views of guest contributors. Email tom.burroughes@wealthbriefing.com or jackie.bennion.clearviewpublishing.com

More and more wealth management organisations realise that forcing employees to navigate dozens of disjointed applications and copy and paste information between them is having a negative impact on their operational costs and employee experience. What is more, having multiple manual operations can increase handling time as well as causing errors, ultimately hurting customer satisfaction or even resulting in financial losses. 

In large organisations, each in-house application has its own separate development team which has a lot of knowledge gained over years of experience. They create customised features in response to complex requirements, and each team feels that they know “their” users. Unfortunately, they might have little knowledge of the other applications running on users’ desktops and might not talk to the other teams in the organisation operating different software. As a result, no one in the firm has a holistic view of how each application fits into the wider user workflows.

Managing, maintaining and monitoring an array of old and new applications – some of which are decades old or written in now-defunct programming languages – is a mammoth task and expensive to sustain, particularly with growing training costs and increasingly complex desktop operations. Big organisations have invested millions in large-scale application consolidation projects to re-write their legacy customer-facing systems from scratch, which have largely been successful. But these can come at a high cost, not just in monetary terms, but at the expense of innovation, as a lot of energy is devoted to re-developing the old systems, meaning that this approach may not always be the best way to stay ahead of the curve.

An alternative and increasingly popular approach is to use an off-the-shelf enterprise interoperability (interop) platform to integrate old and new applications on the desktop. Interoperability platforms allow in-house applications and packages such as salesforce.com, Zendesk, FactSet and Microsoft Office to talk to each other. Leveraging a pre-packaged interop platform to provide the core interop functionality allows in-house tech teams to focus on connecting data and applications. This strategy may also lead to decommissioning legacy applications written in legacy technologies on a step-by-step basis over time.

Opting for an interop platform offers huge cost savings, but there are a couple of important points that companies must consider when embarking on an interop initiative.

First, it is important for organisations to understand their users’ needs. IT-driven initiatives often focus on solving the meatiest and thorniest technical problems, but focussing solely on the technological aspects often means losing sight of the need to make the software as “user-friendly” as possible. It is crucial to understand core users’ workflows and provide the information and functionality users need to complete their tasks efficiently and easily. It doesn’t matter how feature-rich an interop platform is - failing to invest in the user experience means failing to address user needs. And failing to address those needs causes barriers to adoption, affects user efficiency, and increases the development costs associated with rework and short-term fixes.

Sponsorship within the firm at the right level is also a huge factor. For an interop initiative to be successful, there has to be a senior leader involved who can take charge of multiple business areas, and help them effectively collaborate and factor resources and budgets into their planning cycle. Therefore, identifying a senior sponsor capable of unifying dissimilar teams and business lines, embed robust governance and operational practices and ensure a foundation of user-centricity is vital.  

Choosing a full-service interop platform that has been proven in similar complex organisations can facilitate both the orchestration of the user interface (UI) and the integration of data. A platform that provides core features such as universal app search, notification handling and standard UI components allows internal teams to focus on connecting data and applications, while leveraging a functionality that has been developed and tested in the market.

As important as the choice of technology is, it is really just the beginning. Perhaps even more critical is the methodology the organisation chooses to use. An organisation’s objectives and users’ needs will continue to evolve over time. So, even if the trigger for interop was about legacy migration, very soon, today’s new stacks will be tomorrow's legacy stacks.

Embarking on an interop initiative is not a quick fix – it is a journey, which will evolve over time as requirements change, as new regulations are enforced, and different industry standards are rolled out.

Starting small is a good idea. Perhaps by applying the initiative to just three to five apps, or one user role at first in order to pilot both the technology and the strategic approach safely and securely, this could prepare the company to scale up its use in the future, while bringing about real business value quickly, which is, after all, what it is all about.