Modernizing 20-Year-Old Supply Chain Software

Your 20-year-old supply chain software isn't just "legacy"—it's a hostage situation. While your competitors are leveraging real-time visibility and AI-driven logistics, your core business logic is trapped inside a black box of undocumented Delphi, PowerBuilder, or legacy Java code. You want to modernize, but the fear of a "Big Bang" rewrite keeps you paralyzed. You know the stats: 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their timelines, often stretching into a 24-month nightmare that ends in a rollback.

TL;DR: Modernizing 20-year-old supply chain software no longer requires years of manual "code archaeology"; by using Replay for visual reverse engineering, enterprises can extract business logic and UI components directly from user workflows, cutting modernization timelines by 70%.

The $3.6 Trillion Problem: Why Supply Chain Modernization Stalls#

The global technical debt has hit $3.6 trillion, and the supply chain sector carries a disproportionate share of that burden. Most ERP and Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) built in the early 2000s were never designed for the API-first, cloud-native world. They were built for stability, which over two decades has calcified into rigidity.

When you decide to modernize, you usually face two equally unappealing options:

1. •The Big Bang Rewrite: You attempt to document 20 years of "tribal knowledge" and rebuild from scratch. This usually takes 18-24 months and fails when the new system can't handle the edge cases the old system "just knew" how to process.
2. •The Strangler Fig: You slowly replace pieces. It's safer, but it takes years, and you’re forced to maintain expensive middleware to keep the old and new systems talking.

The missing link in both approaches is understanding. 67% of legacy systems lack any meaningful documentation. You aren't just writing code; you're performing archaeology.

Modernization Strategy Comparison#

The Black Box Effect in Supply Chain Logistics#

In a 20-year-old supply chain system, the "source of truth" isn't the code—it's the user workflow. The way a warehouse manager handles a partial shipment or how a logistics coordinator overrides a carrier rate is often buried in hard-coded logic that no living employee remembers writing.

Manual reverse engineering is a massive drain on resources. It takes an average of 40 hours per screen to manually document, design, and code a modern equivalent of a legacy interface. When you have a WMS with 200+ screens, you’re looking at years of work before you even ship a beta.

⚠️ Warning: Most modernization failures occur not because the new technology is bad, but because the business logic of the old system was misunderstood or missed entirely during the discovery phase.

Visual Reverse Engineering: A New Path Forward#

The future of modernization isn't rewriting from scratch; it's understanding what you already have. This is where Replay changes the trajectory. Instead of reading through millions of lines of spaghetti code, Replay uses the running application as the source of truth.

By recording real user workflows—like processing a Bill of Lading or managing inventory levels—Replay's engine captures the UI state, the underlying data structures, and the API interactions. It then converts these recordings into documented React components and clean API contracts.

Step 1: Workflow Capture#

Instead of interviewing stakeholders for weeks, you record the actual experts using the legacy system. Replay captures every click, hover, and data transition.

Step 2: Automated Extraction#

Replay's AI Automation Suite analyzes the recording. It identifies patterns, repeating UI elements, and business logic triggers. It transforms a "black box" screen into a modular architecture.

Step 3: Component Generation#

The system generates production-ready React code. This isn't just "scaffolding"—it’s functional code that reflects the actual logic used in production for the last two decades.

Step 4: Technical Debt Audit#

Replay generates a comprehensive audit of the legacy system, identifying redundant paths and undocumented dependencies. This allows you to "prune" the system as you modernize, rather than migrating 20 years of junk to the cloud.

Preserving Business Logic in Modernizing 20-Year-Old Supply Chain Systems#

One of the biggest pain points in supply chain modernization is the complexity of forms. A "Simple" shipping form might have 50 fields with complex validation logic based on international customs laws. Replaying these workflows ensures that every validation rule is captured.

Here is an example of what Replay extracts from a legacy workflow recording. It doesn't just copy the HTML; it understands the state and the intent.

typescript
// Example: Generated React Component from a Legacy WMS Shipping Screen
// Extracted via Replay Visual Reverse Engineering

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { ModernButton, DataGrid, ValidationAlert } from '@acme-supply/design-system';

export const InventoryAdjustmentModule = ({ legacyId }) => {
  const [adjustmentData, setAdjustmentData] = useState(null);
  const [isSyncing, setIsSyncing] = useState(false);

  // Replay preserved the complex 3-way matching logic found in the legacy recording
  const validateAdjustment = (data) => {
    const isOverLimit = data.quantity > 5000 && data.reasonCode === 'DAMAGED';
    return !isOverLimit;
  };

  const handleCommit = async (payload) => {
    if (!validateAdjustment(payload)) {
      return alert("Adjustment exceeds regional manager override limits.");
    }
    // API Contract generated by Replay AI Suite
    await fetch('/api/v1/inventory/adjust', {
      method: 'POST',
      body: JSON.stringify(payload)
    });
  };

  return (
    <div className="p-6 bg-white rounded-lg shadow-md">
      <h2 className="text-xl font-bold mb-4">Inventory Adjustment: {legacyId}</h2>
      {/* UI structure inferred from visual recording */}
      <DataGrid 
        source={adjustmentData} 
        onCellChange={(val) => setAdjustmentData(val)} 
      />
      <div className="mt-4 flex gap-2">
        <ModernButton onClick={() => handleCommit(adjustmentData)}>
          Confirm Adjustment
        </ModernButton>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
};

💰 ROI Insight: By automating the extraction of these components, Replay reduces the time per screen from 40 hours to 4 hours. For a 100-screen application, that is a savings of 3,600 engineering hours.

From Archaeology to Architecture#

The goal of modernizing 20-year-old supply chain software isn't just to have a "prettier" UI. It's to enable the agility required for modern logistics. When your system is documented and modular, you can finally:

• •Implement E2E Testing: Replay automatically generates E2E tests based on the recorded workflows, ensuring no regressions as you move to the cloud.
• •Expose Clean APIs: Most legacy systems have "accidental" APIs. Replay identifies these and generates clean, documented API contracts.
• •Build a Design System: Using the Replay Library, you can unify the look and feel of your entire enterprise suite without manually rebuilding every button and modal.

📝 Note: For companies in highly regulated sectors like Healthcare or Government logistics, Replay is built for security. It offers SOC2 compliance, is HIPAA-ready, and can be deployed entirely On-Premise to ensure no sensitive supply chain data ever leaves your network.

The Cost of Inaction#

Every month you spend "planning" a rewrite is a month your technical debt accrues interest. The $3.6 trillion technical debt crisis isn't solved by writing more code—it's solved by better understanding the code you already have.

When you use video as the source of truth for reverse engineering, you bypass the "documentation gap" that kills most projects. You move from a state of "we think the system does this" to "we know exactly what the system does because we've recorded it."

Frequently Asked Questions#

How long does legacy extraction take with Replay?#

While a traditional discovery and documentation phase can take 3-6 months, Replay can map and extract core workflows in 2-8 weeks. The actual "recording" of a screen takes minutes; the AI Automation Suite then processes that into code in near real-time.

What about business logic preservation?#

This is Replay's core strength. Because we record the execution of the application, we capture the actual behavior, including edge cases and validation logic that are often missed in manual code reviews. Replay generates functional React components that mirror this logic.

Does Replay work with green-screen or terminal-based systems?#

Yes. Replay’s visual engine can interpret any interface that a user interacts with. Whether it's a 20-year-old Java Swing app, a Delphi desktop client, or a web-wrapped legacy portal, if a user can walk through the workflow, Replay can reverse engineer it.

Can we deploy Replay on-premise?#

Absolutely. We understand that supply chain data is highly sensitive. Replay offers an On-Premise deployment model that keeps all recordings, metadata, and generated code within your own infrastructure, satisfying SOC2 and other regulatory requirements.

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Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay - see your legacy screen extracted live during the call.