<div id="readability-page-1"><div>Wai Wong is the Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Serviceaide, a global provider of enterprise service management solutions. 
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Enterprises across every industry are grappling with the need to digitally transform their businesses to deliver new and improved customer experiences, reduce workforce costs and expedite critical business processes. Organizations including government agencies, banks, retailers, manufacturers, distribution companies, service providers and more are searching for new digital strategies to improve customer interactions, revenue and competitiveness. 
However, legacy applications frequently represent a major roadblock to digital transformation. These older systems, often built decades ago, are obsolete in terms of their inability to power modern digital interactions and improved user experiences. They lack the capacity to deliver the high levels of process automation and self-service that businesses crave. 
 
Built at a time when customer self-service was virtually non-existent, legacy infrastructure requires trained personnel for data entry and interaction with the outside world. These legacy systems rely heavily on human (manual) intelligence and experience for successful operation, rather than having the built-in intelligence we now need to directly interact with end users and remain competitive in a digital and connected world. 
 
According to a piece in TechTarget, the Society for Information Management recently issued a 2021 IT Trends Study, which &#34;found that replacing legacy applications was one of the top 10 largest IT investments for organizations,&#34; for the fourth year in a row. Meanwhile, a survey sponsored by AWS and Tata Consultancy Services &#34;found that 70 percent of chief experience officers believe modernizing legacy applications is a top strategic priority.&#34; 
 
For many organizations, starting from scratch is not a viable, short-term option. The forklift replacement of legacy systems represents immense costs, complexity and disruption for businesses. Line-of-business applications often developed over decades are deeply embedded in operations, representing the backbone of businesses. 
 
Fortunately, delivering new customer experiences and greater automation does not always require a do-over. Many organizations are seeking to move forward with digital transformation by integrating new digital technologies on top of legacy systems via APIs to innovate new services, experiences and process automation. 
Today's APIs are a major boon to digital transformation. They can leverage old, established applications and data repositories to bring new innovative services to customers and other users while masking the complexity of the legacy systems behind them. These APIs create easy interfaces that can be used even by relatively inexperienced developers who don't need to understand the code and business logic used in the legacy application. That represents a major advantage in an era where deep IT and developer skills are in short supply. 
Companies across industries are moving ahead with digital strategies based on new services and functionality built on top of decades-old systems. Such innovations include the development of new mobile apps that allow customers to do business with a company more easily; real-time payments in the financial services industry and new insurance services; and AI-driven data analytics solutions and remote employee access to corporate applications and data. 
Another avenue for modernizing legacy applications is the intelligent virtual agent, which is something that I know quite a lot about. These intelligent machines integrate AI technologies including natural language processing, machine learning and knowledge management to automate user interactions, data entry and service delivery. 
Virtual agents can interact with customers and end users in a conversational manner that makes it possible to mask the complexity of the systems operating in the background. It leads the end user through a conversation that captures critical information, inputs reliable data into the system and automates simple tasks with no human-support interaction. The customer gets the help they need more rapidly, and the business saves dramatically on reduced manpower costs. 
A virtual agent can be trained to ask a series of simple questions to automate the process, with the intelligence to understand the end user’s responses. There are a plethora of industries that are well-suited for virtual assistants, such as enterprise IT service and support to banking, insurance, municipal services and much more. In all but the most technical, complex and/or highly regulated processes, virtual agents can be relatively easily integrated into an existing system to enable automated processes and self-service. 
Companies are exploring their opportunities for modernization and digital transformation — be it mobile applications, e-commerce functionality or the integration of data analytics solutions. Organizations should prioritize their opportunities based on their value in delivering improved experiences for customers and employees, greater costs efficiency and productivity and business growth. Leaders should also, of course, look at the cost and complexity of making the changes they desire. 
Automation represents the golden goose of digital transformation. Ultimately, it is what every organization is striving for as they build out their new digital strategies. The benefits of automation range from tremendous cost savings to improved and more efficient customer service to the development of new sources of revenue. 
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Enterprises across every industry are grappling with the need to digitally transform their businesses to deliver new and improved customer experiences.

Council Post: How Organizations Can Transform Legacy Systems And Processes For The New Digital World