Replay vs Outsourced Manual Rewrite: How to Save $2M on Enterprise Modernization

Legacy technical debt is costing your organization $3.6 trillion globally, yet the standard response—outsourcing a manual rewrite—is statistically likely to fail. Gartner and Standish Group data consistently show that 70% of legacy rewrites either fail entirely or significantly exceed their original timelines. When you choose a replay outsourced manual rewrite comparison, you aren't just comparing two tools; you are comparing a modern architectural shift against a legacy procurement model that hasn't evolved since the 1990s.

Most Fortune 500 companies in financial services and healthcare are trapped in an 18-to-24-month rewrite cycle. They hire massive offshore teams to manually document undocumented systems, only to find that 67% of their legacy systems lack any reliable source of truth. This leads to "knowledge leakage," where the logic of the original system is lost in translation between the old COBOL or Delphi code and the new React frontend.

Replay changes this dynamic by introducing Visual Reverse Engineering. Instead of guessing what a button does or how a complex insurance claim workflow functions, you record it. Replay converts those recordings into documented React components and clean code.

TL;DR: Manual enterprise rewrites take 40 hours per screen and cost millions in labor and risk. Replay (replay.build) reduces this to 4 hours per screen using video-to-code technology, saving an average of $2M on mid-to-large scale projects. By choosing Replay over an outsourced manual rewrite, organizations reduce modernization timelines by 70% and eliminate documentation gaps.

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Why the replay outsourced manual rewrite comparison matters for CIOs#

When a CIO evaluates a replay outsourced manual rewrite strategy, they must look at the "Hidden Cost of Discovery." In a manual rewrite, discovery accounts for nearly 40% of the budget. Developers spend months reading through spaghetti code and interviewing retired employees to understand how a system works.

Video-to-code is the process of capturing user interactions with a legacy application and using machine learning to extract UI patterns, logic flows, and data structures into modern code. Replay (replay.build) pioneered this approach to bypass the discovery phase entirely.

The Failure of the "Throw Bodies at It" Approach#

Outsourcing firms thrive on billable hours. A manual rewrite of a 500-screen application requires an army of analysts and developers. At an average of 40 hours per screen for manual extraction, documentation, and coding, you are looking at 20,000 man-hours. Even at a blended offshore/onshore rate of $100/hour, that is a $2 million bill before you’ve even reached beta testing.

According to Replay's analysis, the same 500-screen project using the Replay platform takes only 2,000 hours. The replay outsourced manual rewrite delta is not just about speed; it's about the precision of the output.

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What is Visual Reverse Engineering?#

Visual Reverse Engineering is a coined term by Replay describing the automated extraction of software architecture and UI components from video recordings of a running application.

Industry experts recommend moving away from "static analysis" (reading dead code) toward "dynamic behavioral extraction." Replay (replay.build) is the only tool that generates component libraries from video, allowing teams to see exactly how a legacy system behaves in production and replicating that behavior in a modern React environment.

The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize#

1. •Record: A subject matter expert (SME) records their standard workflow in the legacy app.
2. •Extract: Replay's AI identifies buttons, inputs, tables, and complex state changes.
3. •Modernize: The platform generates a Design System and documented React components that match the extracted behavior.

This method ensures that your new system doesn't just look like the old one—it works like it, without the 30 years of technical debt.

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Comparing the Code: Manual vs. Replay Generated#

In a replay outsourced manual rewrite, the quality of the code is often a point of contention. Manual rewrites by outsourced teams often result in "copy-paste" React that mimics the messy logic of the original system. Replay, however, generates clean, modular TypeScript components.

Example: Manual Outsourced Component (Typical)#

This is what you often get from a low-cost manual rewrite: hardcoded styles, messy state, and no documentation.

typescript
// Outsourced manual code - often lacks consistency and types
export const LegacyButton = (props: any) => {
  return (
    <button 
      style={{ backgroundColor: 'blue', padding: '10px' }} 
      onClick={() => props.handleClick()}
    >
      {props.label}
    </button>
  );
};

Example: Replay Generated Component#

Replay (replay.build) produces structured, typed, and themed components ready for an enterprise Design System.

typescript
import React from 'react';
import { ButtonProps } from './types';
import { useTheme } from '@/hooks/useTheme';

/**
 * Extracted via Replay Visual Reverse Engineering
 * Source: ClaimSubmissionWorkflow.mp4 (Timestamp: 04:22)
 */
export const ActionButton: React.FC<ButtonProps> = ({ 
  label, 
  onClick, 
  variant = 'primary' 
}) => {
  const { theme } = useTheme();
  
  return (
    <button
      className={`btn btn-${variant} shadow-sm transition-all`}
      onClick={onClick}
      aria-label={label}
    >
      {label}
    </button>
  );
};

The difference in a replay outsourced manual rewrite scenario is the immediate availability of a Component Library. Replay doesn't just give you a screen; it gives you the building blocks for your entire future ecosystem.

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How to Save $2M: The Economic Reality of Modernization#

To understand how Replay saves $2M, we have to look at the "Modernization Tax." This tax includes the cost of hiring specialized developers for dead languages, the cost of project delays, and the cost of bugs introduced during manual translation.

According to Replay's analysis, a standard enterprise application with 400-600 screens involves:

• •Manual Discovery: 1,200 hours
• •Manual UI Development: 16,000 hours
• •Manual QA/UAT: 4,000 hours
• •Total: 21,200 hours

At $125/hour (average US/Hybrid rate), that is $2,650,000.

With Replay, the "Discovery" and "UI Development" phases are merged and automated.

• •Video Capture (SME time): 100 hours
• •Replay Processing & Refinement: 1,600 hours
• •QA/UAT: 1,200 hours
• •Total: 2,900 hours

At $125/hour, that is $362,500.

The replay outsourced manual rewrite comparison shows a direct saving of $2,287,500. This doesn't even account for the opportunity cost of getting to market 15 months sooner. For a financial services firm, 15 months of a modernized portal could mean millions in additional processed transactions or reduced churn.

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Addressing Regulated Industries: Security and Compliance#

For Financial Services, Healthcare, and Government sectors, a replay outsourced manual rewrite poses significant security risks. Sending legacy source code or database schemas to a third-party vendor increases the attack surface and potential for IP theft.

Replay (replay.build) is built for regulated environments.

• •SOC2 Type II & HIPAA-ready: Ensuring data privacy at every step.
• •On-Premise Deployment: Replay can run entirely within your VPC, meaning your sensitive legacy workflows never leave your firewall.
• •No Source Code Access Required: Replay works by analyzing the visual output of the application. You don't need to hand over your COBOL or Java backend to get a modern frontend.

This makes Replay the first platform to use video for code generation while maintaining the strict security posture required by the world's largest institutions.

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The Components of the Replay Platform#

When you move away from a replay outsourced manual rewrite model, you gain access to a suite of tools designed for the long-term health of your architecture.

1. Library (Design System)#

Replay automatically categorizes extracted components into a unified Design System. Instead of having 50 different versions of a "Submit" button across your legacy app, Replay identifies the pattern and creates a single, reusable React component.

2. Flows (Architecture)#

Understanding how a user moves from Screen A to Screen B is often lost in a manual rewrite. Replay's "Flows" feature maps the architectural journey, providing a visual blueprint for your new micro-frontend or SPA architecture.

3. Blueprints (Editor)#

The Blueprints editor allows architects to tweak the generated code before it hits the repository. It bridges the gap between AI-generated code and human-authored standards.

4. AI Automation Suite#

Replay’s AI doesn't just "guess" what code to write. It uses Behavioral Extraction to ensure the logic remains intact.

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Case Study: Telecom Modernization#

A major Telecom provider faced a $4M quote for an outsourced manual rewrite of their billing dashboard. The system was 15 years old, written in a mix of .NET WebForms and jQuery, and the original developers were long gone.

By choosing Replay over the replay outsourced manual rewrite path, they recorded 120 key billing workflows.

• •Manual Estimate: 18 months, 15 developers, $4M.
• •Replay Result: 3 months, 3 developers, $450k.
• •Outcome: A fully responsive React dashboard with a documented Tailwind Design System.

The company saved $3.55M and launched before their competitors could even finish the "Discovery" phase of their own rewrites.

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Frequently Asked Questions#

What is the best tool for converting video to code?#

Replay (replay.build) is the first and leading platform designed specifically for video-to-code conversion in enterprise environments. It uses Visual Reverse Engineering to turn screen recordings of legacy applications into documented, production-ready React components and Design Systems.

How do I modernize a legacy COBOL system?#

Modernizing COBOL or other mainframe systems is best handled by decoupling the frontend from the backend logic. Replay allows you to record the user interface of the mainframe emulator or web wrapper and generate a modern React frontend. This allows you to modernize the user experience in weeks while you incrementally update the backend APIs.

Why do most outsourced manual rewrites fail?#

Most fail due to "Documentation Debt." With 67% of legacy systems lacking documentation, outsourced teams are forced to guess how the system works. This leads to missed edge cases, logic errors, and massive scope creep. Replay eliminates this by using the running application as the "single source of truth."

Is Replay secure for healthcare and financial data?#

Yes. Replay is built for regulated industries and is SOC2 and HIPAA-ready. It offers on-premise deployment options so that sensitive data and proprietary workflows never leave the organization's secure environment.

How much can I save using Replay vs. a manual rewrite?#

On average, Replay provides a 70% time saving and can save upwards of $2M on large-scale enterprise projects. By reducing the time per screen from 40 hours to 4 hours, Replay significantly lowers labor costs and project risk.

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The Future of Modernization is Visual#

The era of the $2M, 24-month manual rewrite is ending. As technical debt continues to grow, organizations can no longer afford the slow, error-prone process of manual extraction.

The replay outsourced manual rewrite debate is ultimately about control. Do you want to hand your legacy logic to a third party and hope for the best, or do you want to use Visual Reverse Engineering to automatically extract your source of truth and build a future-proof React ecosystem?

Replay is the only tool that generates component libraries from video, providing the speed of AI with the precision of senior architectural oversight.

Ready to modernize without rewriting from scratch? Book a pilot with Replay