Outgrown Your Homegrown Solution?

While the media industry has experienced rapid digital transformation over the past few years, many companies are still relying on homegrown technology solutions for business-critical tasks. These systems offer a level of comfort due to their familiarity, but it’s often a false sense of security. Legacy technology doesn’t provide the benefits of modern cloud solutions, such as remote access, application programming interface (API) access, and more. At worst, your homegrown solution may be hindering your efficiency and revenue growth.

In this article, we’ll explore together why it’s critical to act now if you’ve outgrown your homegrown solution, what you need to consider when deciding whether to buy new technology, and what a modern cloud system can do for your media organization.

The hidden costs of legacy technology

1. Strategic insight

If your homegrown solution isn’t helping to drive business decisions that improve advertiser and subscriber relationships, it’s likely time to power down your legacy system for good. To compete in today’s media landscape, you need modern technology that can help you excel today and prepare for the future.

“The data insight capabilities of today’s technology are continually expanding. The Internet of Things (IoT), for example, provides actionable insights that companies could never obtain in the past,” according to this article by Panorama Consulting. “By investing in modern technology with AI and IoT capabilities, companies can use real-time data to make accurate predictions.”

2. Top talent

As media organizations navigate the world of remote work, it’s essential for their technology to enable the recruitment of high quality employees, regardless of location. For example, with a homegrown solution, you’re dependent on IT staff with boots on the ground to keep your hardware and software up and running. However, with a cloud solution purchased from a software vendor that offers robust customer support, you’re not bound by any IT constraints.

Modern technology can also help you keep pace with the changing preferences of today’s workforce. While millennials might be put off by your green screen, they’ll likely be impressed by your adoption of the latest industry-disrupting solution.

3. Customer retention

Organizational silos pose challenges for nearly all media organizations when it comes to sharing data and improving customer experience. Your technology needs to create a personalized, user-friendly, and secure experience for your subscribers and advertisers alike so they’ll continue to trust you with their business.

Transitioning to a modern solution

If you think your homegrown technology solution is on its last legs, it’s time to review your current business processes associated with the system. Analyze how much time it takes to enable booking and billing for new products and services, and consider whether that pace is helping or hurting your innovation and growth. Next, make a list of features or functions you wish you could have in a system, and apply a cost metric to building vs. buying new tech.

Top 3 build vs. buy considerations

1. Revenue impact

• Does your homegrown solution support your ability to create new products or revenue models within its existing architecture?
• Your solution may have been purpose-built for your needs today or yesterday—but was it designed to be forward-looking?
  
  

2. Modern tech stack

• Can your employees access your business systems remotely?
• Does your homegrown solution contain an API framework to facilitate expanding functionality or easily connecting data?
• Does your current app meet security standards, such as privacy legislation compliance?
  
  

3. IT and development resources, cost to maintain, and speed to market

• Is the person who originally built the system still around?
• Do you have personnel with the proper skill sets to design and deploy a business solution that is both scalable and extensible?
• When comparing your investment in your internal system to new solutions, is it costing you more in the long run to keep patching holes vs. investing in new technology?

Streamline processes and reduce costs

If your media organization’s homegrown solution isn’t enabling you to sell new products, protect privacy, facilitate mobile access, and automate processes, your best bet is likely to consider new technology options. 

Most cloud-based enterprise resource planning systems on the market today support mobile apps, web standards, robust security models, private hosting, and more. Some vendors also include software upgrades in their subscription pricing, so you’ll always have access to new features and your IT team won’t have to perform any upgrades themselves. 

Modern order management solutions also provide flexible pricing and product catalogs that can support a variety of booking types all in the same system. Todays’ cloud tech is efficient and easy for your sales team to use since they only have to log in to one system to manage all of their leads and customers, check product portfolio inventory, and book multichannel orders.

Leveraging a single, robust data model provided by a modern cloud solution also improves efficiency and accuracy for other teams such as finance. By eliminating duplicate data entry, you can generate invoices automatically and deliver them electronically.

Save time and increase revenue

Tired of dealing with legacy applications, data silos, manual processes, and a different point solution for every product you sell? Lineup Systems’ advertising solution, Adpoint, can transform your media organization by right-sizing operations, streamlining processes, reducing costs, and providing a flexible infrastructure to grow with your business. Let us support you in selling new products and services with speed and ease.