The secret to a successful transition is not replacing all your legacy systems all at once. The companies that struggle are the ones that treat modernisation as a single, sweeping project. A more effective approach is to build around what you already have, layering in new capabilities incrementally rather than ripping out existing infrastructure and rebuilding from scratch.
The best entry point is a single, high-volume workflow. Accounts payable works well because the pain is immediate, the process is manual, and the results are quantifiable and obvious to individual users. Once you can show measurable improvement for a single workflow, those results become a highly persuasive case for bringing the rest of the organisation along.
Identify employees who are genuinely excited to try new tools and get them involved early. As they experience the benefits of modernisation first-hand they will share their results with the rest of the business organically. Those early champions are key to establishing peer credibility.
Each success compounds. When the organisation sees what is possible at a small scale, resistance diminishes and an appetite for broader modernisation grows.
Michael Delgado
Co-Founder and CEO, Canals
About Michael Delgado
Michael Delgado is co-Founder and CEO of Canals, an AI platform automating key workflows for wholesale distributors. Previously, Delgado led Vested and held leadership roles at Willing before its acquisition by MetLife. A former Wall Street attorney, he holds degrees from Harvard and University of Miami.
The Question is a thought leadership series published on Supply Chain Outlook, created to explore the questions shaping global logistics, procurement, transportation, and supply networks.
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