Limitations and costs are often easier to identify, as you can point to existing costs or lack of functionality. Risks are another animal, as they represent possibilities and lost opportunities. And when it comes down to it, there are too many significant risks to staying on legacy technology to ignore.

Risk #1: You’re vulnerable to cybersecurity incidents.
There is a myth that only “the big companies” are targeted by cyber-criminals. The reality is the SMB organizations are at considerable risk to cybersecurity incidents! The 2021 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report identified that in 2022, 1-in-5 breach victims were SMBs—with a medium-cost of losses at $21,659. But the most important research that SMB organizations need to be aware of and concerned with is that recent research shows that 82% of Ransomware Attacks Target Small Businesses.

Modern technology is reinforced with the latest security and security measures, including round-the-clock monitoring and intelligent threat detection. If you’re relying on one IT professional to protect your entire infrastructure, that’s too much to put on their shoulders, and it’s nearly impossible for a small IT team to keep up with today’s evolving threats. And the fact that you’re on a legacy system makes your infrastructure even more vulnerable, especially if you’re just patching security issues and not implementing every upgrade available.

Risk #2: When you frustrate your workforce, your Infrastructure knowledge can walk.
Most businesses with legacy systems count on their existing employees to understand how to work in them, and to train future staff to do the same. However, this means the keys to working in your systems are locked up in people’s heads —and when those people leave, so do the keys. The complicated workarounds developed by a department to extract data from one system, input it in another and make a meaningful report are second nature to a tenured employee who remembers when the legacy system was shiny and new. But that’s not the case for new hires.

A modern system will be more user-friendly and seamless, and you won’t have so many workarounds to document and explain. This is a heightened concern as the global economy is experiencing “The Great Resignation” which continues at an unprecedented 44%. Talent entering the workforce today doesn’t want to work with outdated, time-consuming tools—and they expect anytime, anywhere access to the information and tools they need to succeed in their jobs. They want to be able to make a difference and realize faster results.

Risk #3: You can easily edge out of compliance.
The more outdated your systems, the harder it will be to remain compliant against today’s ever-changing regulations. Regulations for information security, general cybersecurity, as well as your specific industry evolve as technologies and potential threats evolve. Slipping out of compliance comes with costs and could even damage your reputation with customers. Modern Cloud solutions typically have the latest compliance requirements built in to help minimize your risk.

Risk #4: Your system could fail when you need it most.
Older systems are unreliable, and most small IT teams aren’t equipped to guarantee high availability. Reliability is a top business requirement today. You need to know that no matter what gets thrown your way, your technology will be available and actually be instrumental in solving the problem, not make them worse. Newer technology is built to deliver 99%-plus availability and is designed to enable business continuity and natively support disaster recovery scenarios.

By not upgrading, you also risk downtime to power outages from natural disasters. Sadly, we don’t have control over the weather. But we can help you be less prone to downtime in terms of lost productivity, revenue and customer trust.

Risk #5: Your customer base could erode — quickly.
Business technology isn’t just about internal functionality and productivity. Improving internal processes and migrating to a more efficient, flexible and unified technology will make a noticeable difference to your customers. Using legacy technology, your customer experience is likely slower and less consistent than you could provide with Cloud-based tools. And your customers are getting faster, seamless and more intelligently consistent experiences nearly everywhere else. What are they getting from your competition that’s just too good to pass up? Can you accomplish that with your existing systems, or do you need to change?

Risk #6: Your data isn’t available when you need it.
Legacy systems don’t allow easy access to data and analytics. This means that data-driven decisions are often done with out-of-date data that doesn’t exactly put your company ahead of the game. Making decisions for the future with data from even the recent past is a recipe for stagnant or declining growth that frankly, small businesses cannot afford.

Moving to the Cloud increases your agility, making it easier to respond to changing business needs quickly and pivot to changing market conditions before they are yesterday’s news.

Risk #7: Your competition beats you to the punch.
Legacy technology doesn’t enable the kind of innovation, on-your-feet-thinking and accurate forecasting your company needs to compete and grow. It’s tough to make good, timely business decisions on new markets to pursue, new product lines to launch, or where to improve your supply chain when you’re working with disjointed, stale, inconsistent data, or expending all your internal tech resources just trying to ‘keep the green lights on’. Agility is essential and today’s modern solutions allow you to have visibility across your organization and provide a single source of truth that enables faster, more informed decisions and real-time forecasts.