Product Launch #32

Modernizing a 20-year-old ERP for 3X recurring revenue

Summary

3 businesses, 1 playbook: using Modularis wherever “rewrite or die” shows up

This pattern shows up in almost every mature software organization: a 15- or 25-year-old product, an internal team pushing for a total rewrite, and customers who are simply unwilling to live through another ERP implementation. The architects envision an elegant, modern rebuild. The business is afraid of years of delay, massive risk, and no guaranteed payoff.

At Cultura, Modularis was brought in specifically to break that stalemate. Not by defeating the rewrite argument, but by proving that a rewrite isn’t the only option.

“Every time I asked the team, the answer was: we have to rewrite it. That's why I called Modularis. I knew that was not the only answer.”

Rich Reynertson

President, Cultura Technologies

That’s the inflection point where modernization became reality.

From “rewrite the ERP” to “fix what customers actually care about”

Most internal modernization debates are dominated by UI and frameworks. But if you talk to the customers keeping the lights on, you’ll hear something else entirely. They care about risk, disruption, and continuity. They want the same workflows they’ve relied on for years… they just want the backend to stop holding them hostage.

The modernizer’s job – Modularis in this case – isn’t to replace the system. It’s to remove the pain without forcing customers to start over. Of course they’re asking for innovation…but not at the expense of stability, security, or headroom.

Weekend prototype that broke a 7-figure deadlock

In one of Cultura’s portfolio companies, the team had already sunk millions into a front-end rewrite, with another seven figures projected to finish. The non-negotiable assumption? The database could not be modernized until the new UI was done.

A single weekend proved otherwise.

Modularis received the codebase, worked independently, and came back two days later with a working proof-of-concept: the product running on SQL server with multi-tenant behavior that was previously believed to require Oracle.

“They said it couldn’t be done. AJ’s [Modularis] team did a prototype over the weekend and proved that we could do it.”

Rich Reynertson

President, Cultura Technologies

The prototype didn’t replace the engineering plan. It replaced the narrative. And once the rewrite was no longer “the only way forward,” business decisions became possible again.

3.5X services + 3X recurring revenue

The most significant outcomes from the approach that Cultura and Modularis took aren’t technical – they’re commercial.

Once modernization stopped being a “philosophical debate” and became a practical path, revenue quickly followed. The company retained enterprise customers who were ready to walk, expanded existing service engagements, and unlocked new recurring revenue streams without rewriting the core product.

Services revenue: ~$1.5M → $5.5M in one year
Recurring revenue: $5M → $30M in three years

A “no rip-and-replace” path for legacy vertical software

The markets Modularis serves are invisible to most venture-backed thinking: 20-year-old vertical software companies doing $5M-$30M in revenue, deeply invested in their customer workflows, still profitable… but technologically stranded.

They can’t justify a rewrite. Their customers don’t want revolution in their ERP, they want an evolution of the product. Yet they still need:

Cloud access
Mobile capability
Modern integrations
Security compliance
A believable roadmap

In this case, Modularis provided a modernization path that protects the installed base. No rip-and-replace, no reset of customer trust, no lost years.

“Customers don’t want to implement a new ERP… What they want is their business issues taken care of, and you can take care of those issues today while protecting your investment for tomorrow.”

Rich Reynertson

President, Cultura Technologies

"Modularis has been a terrific strategic partner for us.They have the leadership, experience, discipline, and technology we needed to build and grow our global IoT platform."