Why Modernization Works Best One Module At A Time
Andy Zosel, EVP and Chief Product & Technology Officer, Diebold Nixdorf, has led global technology and product teams for nearly 30 years.
gettyI joined Diebold Nixdorf a few months ago to lead technology across its banking and retail businesses. Coming in from outside the industry, one thing became clear fast: A bank branch and a retail store depend on many of the same foundational capabilities, such as moving money safely, verifying identities, processing payments and preventing fraud.
Most organizations still build those capabilities twice—on separate roadmaps maintained by separate teams—even though their needs are often the same. The clear opportunity is reuse: building a capability once and letting both businesses share it. Done well, that will drive faster innovation, lower costs, reduce risk and improve customer experiences, all at once.
Consider what happens when there’s a new requirement, payment type, fraud control or compliance rule. On separate roadmaps, two departments build and test their own solution. On a shared foundation, it becomes one capability that both can adopt. Engineering is done once, allowing the second team to focus its efforts on new initiatives instead of duplicating work. The result is faster delivery without the cost and risk of solving the same problem twice.
The effects compound. Every capability you reuse is one your teams don’t have to fund, staff or maintain twice, which is where much of the cost savings and speed come from. A reused component is also already proven in production, so each addition builds on a known-good foundation instead of introducing fresh risk. Customers feel the result as consistency: the same capability behaving the same way at an ATM or a self-checkout, in a branch or a store.
This is where a shared foundation matters most, because it changes how modernization feels. Many banks and retailers are running core systems that are decades old, and the instinct is to treat modernization as one massive, multiyear program. That framing is exactly what makes it feel too risky to start.
A shared platform lets you break that journey into steps. You modernize one capability at a time, along a path that’s already proven, instead of committing everything to a single transformation with no room for error. Each step is small enough to justify inside a normal budget cycle and ideally solves a real problem you’re feeling today. A funded, visible win earns room for the next one, and modernization becomes a sequence of manageable moves.
There’s a simple test I offer leaders who are unsure where to begin. Think of an older computer that can’t run today’s AI until the hardware is upgraded. The same is true of your core systems. Before you add the capability your board is asking for, ask whether the foundation beneath it can carry that capability. Often, the foundation is the real first step, and naming it is what turns an overwhelming project into a clear one.
The same discipline pays off in a way that’s easy to overlook: It future-proofs the business. Commerce keeps changing. New forms of payment, including digital currency, are working their way into everyday transactions, and AI is beginning to move from informing decisions to initiating and completing them.
None of that has fully arrived, and I’d be cautious about anyone who says otherwise. But it’s exactly why a reusable foundation matters. When your platform is built to extend, a new payment type or form of AI-driven commerce becomes an addition to what you already have rather than a requirement to start over. Invest in that foundation now, and those transitions arrive as routine upgrades instead of emergencies.
If I had to reduce this to a single piece of advice, it would be this: Stop rebuilding what you can reuse and modernize in steps that each earn their place. That’s the path to lasting transformation, and it’s what I’ll keep building toward.
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