Business System Consultation Center - Our Business System ColumnVol.159 2025.01.01 Takahashi Minoru

When should an in-house system be renewed?

Thank you for your interest and continued support.
This is Takahashi from the Marketing Plan Research Laboratory.


Ever since my days as a consultant,
I was captivated by the rise of Access 2.0 in the 1990s and switched to working as a systems engineer, a career I continue to this day.
Then as now, a common theme in consultations is
“We no longer understand the specifications of our computer (system)”
“I haven’t thrown away the documents, but they’re outdated, have become obsolete, and are unreadable”
These are the kinds of concerns I hear.


Since the Lehman Shock, Microsoft Azure and AWS,
and since the COVID-19 pandemic, the concept of DX has begun to gain traction,
and with all the talk of “moving to the cloud,” “phasing out legacy systems,” and “system overhauls,”
sales pitches have been flying around to stoke the ambitions of business leaders,
while always making it seem like the dawn of a new era,
what actually happens on the front lines of system development and at the client companies
what’s actually happening hasn’t changed from the past.


Companies do not have a lifespan, but
Employees have a retirement age,
and systems have a lifespan in the form of obsolescence (which essentially means becoming a black box).
Unlike employees and other resources,
their lifespan can be extended through careful planning,
we provide daily system maintenance services to each of our clients.


Obsolescence occurs not only in large systems
but also to the Excel files you currently use.
Even if you currently understand the contents of an Excel file and are using it correctly,
there will come a time when no one understands its specifications and maintenance becomes impossible.
In fact, isn’t the Excel file you’re using right now something that was rebuilt from scratch for that very reason?


The best remedy for system obsolescence is “not changing the person in charge.”
To put it another way, it is “not reducing the number of people in charge as much as possible.”


While a system requires a large number of SE during development,
once the system moves from deployment to stable operation, most of them become unnecessary and are let go.
Since there is no technology to digitize everything in the human mind,
the expertise accumulated by each dismissed SE is lost.
Since the system is already built, even without that know-how,
it will continue to operate without issues for the time being,
However, as the dismissal and replacement of SEs continues over the long term,
the result will be a system where “no one fully understands the specifications.”
The difficulty of maintaining and modifying an outdated system skyrockets,
and in some cases, depending on the severity, even a complete overhaul becomes difficult.


The above applies not only to systems
but also applies to situations where Excel spreadsheets are created and used internally for extended periods.


The following measures are effective in preventing system obsolescence and the creation of black boxes:
① Develop programs and functions with as few internal and external SE personnel as possible
*Note: There is no issue with involving a large number of people for gathering opinions, exchanging ideas, or making policy decisions
　　　　It is also acceptable to design based on a single decision by management
　　　　Whether the approach is bottom-up or top-down has no bearing on obsolescence
　　　　Whether development is in-house or outsourced is also irrelevant
　　　　As always, choose the approach that best fits your company’s culture
② Have the same internal or external SE who was responsible for development handle maintenance,
and avoid reducing headcount through reassignments or dismissals
③ If a handover of the SE is unavoidable,
either rebuild the system from scratch or re-outsource it to an external provider while the current SE is still employed


Waiting until the person in charge is gone is far too late,
and whether maintaining or overhauling an outdated system
will incur significantly higher costs than before.
I hope that by taking proactive measures, we can delay the obsolescence of systems, Excel spreadsheets, and computers even slightly.
I hope you find the above information helpful.


That's all, Thank you for reading.

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