Why it’s important to upgrade your information management software

Ever notice how people head to the back of the room at business events? Ask any public speaker about who gets the most value out of a session and they’ll all say it’s those sitting in the front row. The same thing happens in technology. The people who are at the front of the queue for new releases get the best return on their investment.

Don’t believe us? Here’s why that’s true.

Maximising your software investment

Enterprise software comes with maintenance fees which give you access to software upgrades. When you pay those maintenance fees, you’re already investing in the newest version of software. Unless you upgrade, you can’t benefit from your software investment.

Impact of using older versions of software

One of the top reasons to move to a new release is to take advantage of the numerous fixes and enhancements making it into every version. Many of these changes are directly related to customer requests for enhancement (RFE). This is especially true of minor releases where the upgrades are made primarily at the request of customers.

If you’re using an older version of software, you may experience an issue or miss out on improvements that have already been added or fixed. You may even get to the point where the version you’re using is no longer supported. It gives your industry peers a jump start on you when they have access to more functionality and enhancements developed at the request of other users.

The longer you leave it, the harder it becomes to upgrade

Technology is changing at a rapid rate. Not only are software vendors continually providing upgrades, so are hardware and firmware suppliers. When one part of your tech ecosystem changes, that can trigger the need for changes in other parts. This can impact the stability of your application software.

For mature software products like GIM Suite or EnviroSys, each upgrade is a step change to the next version. It can become more complex to upgrade software to the latest version if you have lagged behind new releases. The safest way to do it is to serially upgrade to each major version, which can be a long, laborious process depending on how far behind you are on the current release.

The most obvious reason – new capabilities

It’s easy to consider only the new features and forget about all the fixes, enhancements, and additions made in a software release. While some of the new features will be directly related to new functionality, major releases often have necessary changes to ensure long-term stability of the product. Or, the new release is using different underlying architecture to avoid the technical debt that occurs over time.

For example, GIM Suite 5 is introducing a new licensing model giving customers full access to both components in GIM Suite – including desktop/server, web and mobile. This means you can choose what you want to use from the product suite. If you want to stay with your existing workflows and set up, you can. But it also means you can start using and testing new functionality to benefit from much more modern web and mobile features – and you can do it in your own time and not under pressure of an upgrade due to changes in your tech stack.

Staying ahead of the game

Technology is continually improving and much more rapidly than ever before. Staying up to date with your software provides competitive advantage and enhanced return on investment for your business. Why wouldn’t you want to get to the front of the queue for those reasons?

Find out what’s new in both GIM Suite and EnviroSys by visiting the What’s New? pages. If you’re ready to upgrade, contact us.