Modernizing Applications

Many green screen applications continue to perform admirably. Still, targeted UI enhancements have the potential to drive substantial ROI without requiring a major development project – or giving up what already works.

In this blog, we explore some common limitations of legacy user interfaces and how modernized UI can breathe new life into legacy applications by directly addressing these issues.

A Legacy Green Screen ERP UI Can Still Perform Admirably

A variety of legacy applications such as ERP software still employ the green-on-black background user interface (UI) style known as “green screen.” This approach reflects the limited color range screens available when these applications were originally designed 30-40 years ago and the only user input mechanism was the keyboard.

While green screen user interfaces may look outdated to a casual observer today, many businesses continue to employ applications with this UI for good reason: they get the job done. Across a wide variety of manufacturing and distribution workflows, green screens are still perfectly capable of providing an efficient interface for many employees’ daily tasks.

Most importantly, employees become deeply accustomed to their daily operations within green screen environments. They realize for a particular data entry screen they press tab 4 times, enter data, tab, enter data, hit enter … done! Due to employees’ familiarity with the longstanding user interface, replacement solutions face the added barrier of requiring substantial training. In this context, a variety of businesses make a strategic choice to stay the course with green screen-based software.

Based on our experience supporting legacy ERP software and other business-critical applications for many different manufacturing and distribution businesses, legacy software with an outdated UI can still drive exceptional value. However, businesses that rely on this software can often benefit from identifying focused enhancements that are carefully targeted at some of the important limitations of legacy UI.

Key Limitations of Green Screen ERP UI vs. Modern UI

UI modernization need not be an all-or-nothing proposition. While some organizations may benefit from a wholesale shift to a more modern UI, others will drive the most ROI by building on what works in their current system while pinpointing specific solutions to daily UI pain points.

While green screens may be second nature to long-time employees, they create added difficulty for onboarding new users. Many younger employees are accustomed to easy-to-use mobile applications and don’t understand why their business apps cannot work the same way.
A green-screen interface may require extra clicks to drill down into key operational details, introducing a chronic inefficiency to daily workflows (and potentially limiting operational awareness).
Legacy interfaces will often have relatively few options for integrating new data sources or capabilities within the existing interfaces.

In many cases, targeted UI enhancement work can directly address each of these limitations—without requiring expansive development work or training employees on an entirely new system.

Benefits of a UI Refresh for ERP Software and Other Business-Critical Applications

While the list of enhancements below is not exhaustive, these examples highlight a key theme of the most effective UI modernization projects: improvements tied to specific business requirements and actual day-to-day workflows, not a top-down vision for how the UI should look.

Many screens and workflows can benefit from expanded drill-down capabilities with the click of the mouse. These enhancements help put key data at the fingertips of the relevant employees, saving time while helping ensure that key details aren’t missed.
Combining information from multiple screens can help limit time navigating UI and de-silo important valuable operational data across departments and job functions.
User interfaces should be simplified to make training and knowledge-sharing easier. UI enhancement work should identify tribal knowledge points that are apparent to long-time users but opaque to new or cross-functional users and provide more transparent on-screen guidance and instruction (in addition to documentation).
Enhancement work can help integrate easy access to new capabilities from external systems or services (for example, via API) into existing screens and workflows.

See our guide here for a broader look at how to revitalize legacy ERP software (potentially saving millions compared to abandoning software that still offers excellent value).

Best Practices When Approaching a User Interface Update for Legacy Applications

Our team has found the following best practices helpful for shaping UI enhancements geared to deliver the greatest possible ROI – without unnecessarily discarding existing green screen UI that is performing admirably.

Don’t go too big. You need not replace entire sections of the product. Even one or small additions (like the ability to drill down into specific manufacturing floor capacity from one screen) can drive big value.
Focus on tangible short-term improvements in specific areas of the business. In many cases, effective improvements can deliver value in weeks, not years.
Make user adoption a central part of planning. The most streamlined user interface in the world will not help if users do not incorporate it effectively in their daily work. Start by studying how specific users interact with the existing UI, and focus on improvements for the tasks that create the most day-to-day friction and frustration. From there, training should help users see exactly how the refreshed UI can make their job easier.

ProCern specializes in helping organizations get the most out of their business-critical software, including targeted enhancements to help legacy applications continue to perform their best. If you need help identifying the best path forward for your ERP, we encourage you to reach out to our team.