Lessons Learned from a 4-year Product Re-platforming Journey
Summary
Lots of legacy enterprise product suites are being re-platformed to become updated SaaS offerings and offer richer, responsive, device agnostic experiences. While the benefits of such initiatives are many for the business and their customers, it also comes wrought with many major challenges in strategy, technology, time to market and managing change and disruption for the existing customer base. This talk will present a case study and 10 learnings from a 4-year long re-platforming journey of UKG Ready, a HCM product suite. As we follow the journey, we will also learn from UX strategy and contributions at each stage.
Key Insights
-
•
Legacy enterprise applications often persist due to high risk and complexity despite technology advances.
-
•
Re-platforming on the cloud varies from simple re-hosting to full refactoring and requires tailoring to business goals.
-
•
UX teams need to evolve from embedded roles to centralized, strategic influencers in re-platforming projects.
-
•
Focusing too narrowly on one persona, such as end users, risks neglecting important power users and administrators.
-
•
A blended approach combining visual refreshes and incremental re-platforming can ease transitions but requires careful consistency.
-
•
Designing for change includes not just usability but also product consumability like adoption speed and time to value.
-
•
Robust change management addresses both external customers and internal teams to align rationale and reduce resistance.
-
•
Initial customer resistance to change is natural and may mask genuine pain points, requiring feedback at scale with qualitative and quantitative data.
-
•
Hyper-focus on individual features or modules can cause loss of peripheral vision, leading to fragmented experience and customer frustration.
-
•
Maintaining team morale during long, complex transformations is critical for sustained success and delivering customer value.
Notable Quotes
"Legacy applications linger because changing them is risk-ridden and a major undertaking."
"No two re-platforming journeys are exactly the same, and there isn't one single formula that works every time."
"We did a blended approach with a visual refresh first to minimize differences between old and new and buy time."
"We neglected our power users during the responsive, one-size-fits-all strategy, and it really hurt us."
"Re-platforming is transformative not just for the product but also for the people, teams, and organization."
"There is no solid way to control the course of your re-platforming project; being flexible is essential."
"The curse of hyper-focus means you lose peripheral vision and miss the larger context and customer needs."
"Designing for change means focusing on learnability and product consumability, not just ease of use."
"Managing resistance is mental; customers might resist because they've learned workarounds with legacy systems."
"Keep a pulse on your team morale because re-platforming journeys can either enrich or burn out your people."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"You’re not supposed to sell to the US public sector unless you’re WCAG 2.0 AA compliant."
Sheri Byrne-HaberAccessibility at Scale
June 9, 2021
"Observation reveals needs users themselves haven’t recognized yet."
Prayag Narula Hannah HudsonEmpowering Designers to do Good Research
March 11, 2022
"When I first started, I felt like I had this little superpower that nobody else really knew about."
Janelle EstesUX Research Trends
January 28, 2021
"Style guides and embedding content systems into design systems help scale content without bottlenecks."
Craig Brookes Andreas Huebner Morgan Quinn"Just Make it Look Good" and Other Ways We're Misunderstood
June 11, 2021
"Respondents who feel very connected are twice as likely to say they’re making a significant impact."
Marc Fonteijn Ru ButlerIncrease your confidence, influence, and impact (through a Professional Community)
December 3, 2024
"The longer you take to recognize research ops and scale your team, the harder it becomes to amplify the value of your research investment — Carrie, Booking.com."
Kate TowseyThe State of ResearchOps: More Than Just Theory
June 20, 2019
"When we’re not safe, our thinking brain — the neocortex — shuts down and operating IQ drops by half."
Alla WeinbergDesign Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
September 9, 2022
"Our digital experience group acts like hosts and planners making sure veterans sit down to a cohesive, inclusive meal, not just disparate dishes."
Shawna Hein Kevin HoffmanCreate a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
November 17, 2022
"Being comfortable with discomfort is key — if someone tells me I'm wrong, I'm okay with that."
Tricia WangSCALE: Discussion
June 15, 2018
