Modernizing equipment finance technology is a significant undertaking. As a result, many companies stick with old technology for too long, acting out of fear instead of seizing the opportunity.

As an equipment finance executive who has recently overseen the transition to a modern equipment finance platform, I’m here to underscore the benefits of taking the leap. Yes, modernizing your technology comes with risks, but failing to take on those risks leaves indispensable opportunities on the table and weakens your business over the long term (which is its own risk).

Specifically, modernization allows you to act faster, attract, retain and train top talent and take the lead on adopting innovative new business models. In my experience, all these advances are worth the work that goes into modernizing your business.

Speed and the Customer Experience

Many equipment finance companies are running on decades-old technology. The result is an inability to keep up with customer demands and shift practices to stay at the forefront of the industry.

For example, let’s say your leasing finance technology doesn’t allow for broker access, so you have to build workarounds for them. Every workaround represents significant time and money, plus the outsize liability of errors due to the nature of manual workarounds. Modern technology should be flexible enough to support that third party, allowing customers to work with you however they want without demanding timely and costly modifications.

The same goes for adapting a system to meet client needs. With an outdated system, it might take six months to modify your technology. By the time the modification happens, you — and your customers — already need something new. With a modern, modular system, change is much quicker, allowing you to anticipate the customer’s needs instead of catching up to them.

Each individual customer inconvenience may seem small, but they add up. Altogether, they change how customers perceive your brand. By modernizing your technology, you will consistently “wow” your customers instead of leaving them asking for more. That’s worth the considerable undertaking that modernization represents.

Employee Training, Retention and Recruitment

Outdated technology is a burden for employees. It requires specialized knowledge, and younger employees in particular will not find it intuitive. This burden risks alienating employees, who will find their day-to-day work harder and wonder why their company isn’t keeping up with industry standards.

Modern equipment finance technology follows the life of a lease, allowing employees to navigate leasing intuitively. Even without a finance or accounting background, employees should be able to understand the components that go into each asset, how they perform in a portfolio and how to follow them through to payments. When this is the case, training is easier, retention is higher and recruitment is more robust.

All of these advantages combine to foster a more competitive organization. When the employee experience is better, employers are able to minimize churn and focus their budget on servicing customers, not constantly recruiting and training new employees.

Innovation and Independence

Modern equipment finance technology also allows you to innovate. Consider the as-a-service model to which much of the industry is transitioning. Old systems generally can’t facilitate this transformation, partly because they struggle to accommodate a single monthly bill that includes the lease of the physical asset, any pay-per-use metered charges and other bundled offerings like service and maintenance.

Modern equipment finance technology does exactly this, allowing clients to handle billing and other business processes on their own terms. It doesn’t force equipment finance companies into a one-size-fits-all mindset. Instead, it empowers them to treat each customer as an individual and explore the innovative solutions that they demand. So, if one customer wants to pay for equipment on a per-use basis while another customer favors traditional leases, an equipment finance company can facilitate each model.

This ability to innovate also fosters independence. A company running on old technology is at the mercy of its partners. A company with flexible modern technology can make the changes required to keep up with the pace of industry change — and integrate its technology with a broader range of complementary systems to get the job done.

Looking Three Years Ahead

Equipment finance executives need to ask themselves what their company will look like in three years. If Canon hadn’t adopted Odessa, our old system would be stifling the business we can now go after. Modernizing your infrastructure opens up the ability to plan more aggressively. For Canon Financial Services, it resulted in our best performance year ever last year.

Don’t get me wrong — modernization is a big change, and we, too, were apprehensive. But, we tested aggressively, moved cautiously and made dramatic improvements. Put together a solid business case for modernization and be confident you can go after it. Three years from now, you’ll be glad you took the plunge.