Periodically, businesses must evaluate their processes and systems to ensure they are up to date with the current technology. This is important because as technology ages and you build on top of it, things become more fragile and they break. It can be hard to convince a business owner that it’s time to modernize, when they see tech that is not “broken” right now. In general, humans resist change. We tend to live by the mantra, “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” But when it comes to technology, being proactive is key. Upgrading systems and hardware before they break is far less expensive than the alternative.

Convincing business owners to modernize systems and processes that are currently functioning can be difficult. One of the biggest ways to overcome the inevitable resistance is to first make sure they understand that you’re on their side, that you care. You understand that they have someone losing sleep over a system or process that is clunky. That person is being woken up in the middle of the night and it’s taking a literal, physical toll. Explain that modernizing this specific process or system will alleviate that burden and help workflows run smoothly. Help them understand that you’re there to make their lives easier, not harder.

Part of the resistance is going to come when you sit down to discuss what’s working and what isn’t. They will want you to fix the immediate problem of what is wrong, but as you dig deeper you often find that there are more underlying issues that need to be addressed. People are going to balk at changing something that is, in their eyes, working just fine. Help them understand that if they continue to build on this outdated process it is going to lead to additional problems. It’s like putting drywall over wiring that dates back to the early twentieth century. It might not be causing a problem now, but it will eventually cause a fire. Even though it isn’t in your face and you can’t see it, that doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist.

One way to explain the risk to someone modernizing a system that’s fragile is to give them numbers. Take what you know about the business, it’s traffic patterns, when products and features are released, and give an estimate of risk. For instance, after analyzing the data, there’s an 80% chance that a specific server is going to break in the next quarter. Some will still resist due to budget or competing priorities. And for those staunch resistors, sometimes it takes something breaking before they will agree to modernize to fix it. However, it almost always becomes more costly at that breaking point, not because the process of fixing it is necessarily more money, but absorbing the costs of losing revenue or losing customers in general as result of the break adds up quickly.

Modernization, like any decision in technology, comes down to weighing risks and benefits. Meeting with business owners face to face or by video call so you can read body language is the best way to determine whether discussing risks or benefits will be the best route to go. Usually it will be a combination of the two, but being able to lay out logical analysis using numbers and data to codify either will help businesses understand why modernization is important. There will always be those who wait until something breaks to adjust, but if you go in to the meeting with the attitude that you’re on their side it will go a long way towards the end goal.