SME: Understand and Modernise Legacy Applications

A manufacturing company with 350 employees relies on a bespoke ERP solution built in 2003 — 180,000 lines of COBOL and VBA, no documentation, the original developer gone for 12 years. The system runs, but nobody fully understands it. Every change is risky. A replacement project had been abandoned three times because nobody could define what the legacy system actually does.

The Knowledge Lives in the Code — and Nowhere Else

Without documentation, reverse engineering is the only path. Classical manual reverse engineering by external consultants would have taken 18 months and around €800,000 — with uncertain results. And the code contains highly sensitive business logic: pricing calculations, discount structures, supplier terms.

AI-Powered Legacy Analysis with SoverIQ

SoverIQ Stack runs on the internal server. The entire codebase was read in and indexed locally:

• Automatic explanation of every function and procedure in plain language
• Dependency graph: which modules call which? What happens when module X is changed?
• Data flow documentation: how do data move through the system?
• Identification of critical and deprecated code paths
• Migration candidates: which modules can be isolated and replaced independently?

Developers can now ask in chat: “What exactly happens in the pricing calculation for Category B customers with special terms?”

Results

Complete system documentation was available after 6 weeks — instead of 18 months. The replacement strategy (incremental via domain-isolated microservices) was finalised in 3 months. The company started migration with its own team — no external consultants. Budget: €220,000 instead of the originally planned €800,000.