“Just make it work like the old system”: the most expensive sentence in a system change

The request is understandable. People know the old screens, the deadline is tight, and copying what exists feels safer than deciding something new. Vendors are often happy to oblige, because a like-for-like implementation is quicker to deliver.

What it really costs

• You pay for the new system and keep the old problems. The workarounds, the spreadsheets and the half-finished templates all come across, now with a new licence fee.
• The new system's strengths go unused. The reasons you chose it, such as better workflow, client portal, reporting or integration, get bent to fit the old way of working.
• You end up using a fraction of it again. The same 40% problem, a few years earlier than last time.

What to do instead

1. Start from outcomes, not screens. Agree what each process should achieve for clients, fee earners and the firm, before anyone talks about fields and menus.
2. List the workarounds, and why they exist. Every workaround is a clue to a problem the old system did not solve.
3. Decide, process by process: retire it, redesign it, or keep it because it genuinely works.
4. Use the move to clean your data, rather than migrating years of inconsistency into a fresh system.
5. Test with real users on real matters before go-live, and train people in the new way of working, not the old one mapped across.

Keep what works, change what does not

Nobody is suggesting firms throw away processes that serve them well. The point is to choose deliberately. A system change is the one moment when the whole firm expects things to be different; it is a waste to spend it recreating the past.

We help firms map how they work today, decide what should change, and make sure the new system is configured for the future rather than the past, independently of any vendor.