Say Goodbye to Outdated AS/400 Systems, We’re Here to Help You Move On

J.D. Edwards World Solution Company or JD Edwards (JDE), was an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software company founded in 1977. Their products included World for IBM AS/400, OneWorld for CNC architecture and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. In 2003, the company was purchased by PeopleSoft, then in turn, PeopleSoft was acquired by Oracle in 2005.

Oracle continues to sell EnterpriseOne and World ERP software. However, if you are one of the companies still running on an AS/400 or IBM i-series, you may want to start considering more modern ERP solutions.

These World and AS/400 systems, once satisfactory, are slowly becoming difficult to use and support for the systems is fading out. Your company needs a system that will stay current with new technology, support your data models and have an easy user experience.

Why would you stay on World or AS/400?

The easiest thing to do is nothing, make no changes. The system works, why change it? If you stay, you experience:

• Less capital expenditure.
• No retraining of users.
• Less business disruption.

But what you don’t know…

While you’re staying comfortable on your outdated systems, your competitors are strategically moving to modern and cloud-based systems, giving them a competitive advantage over your company. Although there are still differences between Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and other modern ERP systems, the ultimate truth is that most current ERP systems give you a leg-up over the outdated World or AS/400 ERP system you’re currently running.

What do modern ERP systems have that World or AS/400 systems don’t?

The benefits are significant. No matter which outdated ERP system or version you’re currently running, moving to a newer system will undoubtedly result in these benefits (and many times, more).

• More support options – As newer technologies and software are developed and invested in, older, more obsolete products will be faded out over time, which means less and less support. Fewer consultants and programmers still work with World or AS/400 systems. By contrast, there are thousands of Microsoft Certified Professionals and ERP specialists that give full business support.
  
  
• A modern interface – Nearly everyone knows how to use a PC and their smartphone today. The screens are colorful. Menu options are intuitive. We can access information on the go. The ERP system looks and feels more like all the other productivity tools in your office.
  
  
• More functionality – If there are features/solutions that you need that aren’t part of the core ‘out of the box’ system, you can often find partnering solutions that can integrate with the new system. Older systems cannot easily integrate with partnering solutions because the solutions are fresh technology and built to be integrated with modern systems. In addition to partnering solutions, Microsoft’s Research and Development team are consistently discovering and creating innovative ideas to add to their software products.
  
  
• More flexibility – When your business model changes, you can easily re-configure the system, usually without any programming.
  
  
• Better insight – You can view reports easily and see actionable insights from your data by marrying your system data with big data. Use machine learning and predictive business analytics to forecast demand and reduce data quality issues.
  
  
• Attract and Retain Employees – As World and AS/400 systems grow older, so are the people who know how to work and configure the systems. And as those employees near retirement age, the positions will need to be filled. But with an older system in place, it is harder to attract and hire new, younger employees because they did not learn how to work with the older systems. Most college grads studied the modern systems and know all the ins and outs.

The Time is Now.

At some point, each company needs to make a decision – continue running an outdated system without much support or eventually move to a newer, modern system? You’ll need to eventually move to a newer system, so why wait?

Would you like to learn more about moving from an outdated system to Microsoft? Contact us today to start the conversation!

Author: Mark Lanoue, Solution Architect

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