NexaLogistics: Finding Champions Outside Engineering

Look for the executive who feels the pain most directly. The VP of Sales who loses deals to "outdated technology" objections. The COO who deals with operational inefficiency from slow systems. The customer success leader fielding complaints about poor performance. Invite them to see customer feedback firsthand -- advisory boards, support ticket reviews, or competitor demos. Once they experience the problem personally, they become natural advocates. Do not pitch them on "refactoring" -- show them the business impact they already care about.

Start by mapping technical limitations to lost deals. Ask Sales which features or capabilities prospects ask for that your platform cannot deliver. Ask Customer Success which limitations drive churn. Then prioritize remediation work that directly unblocks those revenue opportunities. At NexaLogistics, the VP of Sales maintained a shared document linking each tech improvement to specific deals in the pipeline. When the React dashboard launched, she immediately scheduled follow-up demos with prospects who had previously cited the outdated UI as a concern.

It depends on the use case. NexaLogistics chose Rust specifically because route optimization is a compute-intensive problem where raw performance matters enormously -- 23 minutes versus 47 seconds is a competitive differentiator. For most legacy systems, a same-language rewrite or incremental modernization is more practical. The key lesson is not "rewrite everything in Rust" but "choose the right tool for the specific problem." The characterization testing they did first -- thoroughly documenting the legacy system's behavior through tests before writing a single line of new code -- was the real success factor.

Record and categorize every piece of customer feedback that relates to technical limitations. Group them by theme: performance complaints, missing features blocked by architecture, usability issues from outdated UI, integration gaps. Then quantify the business impact: how many customers raised each issue, what is the churn risk, what deals are blocked. Present this as a "Voice of Customer" report rather than a "tech debt" report. Executives respond to customer pain much more strongly than to engineering assessments of code quality.

Three reasons. First, prioritization improves because business leaders ensure the team works on what matters to customers and revenue, not just what is technically interesting. Second, executive support becomes durable because a business leader co-owning the effort prevents the "engineering is spending money on pet projects" narrative. Third, communication improves because the business co-lead naturally translates technical progress into language the board understands. At NexaLogistics, the quarterly "Platform Health" co-presentation became a board highlight rather than a tedious engineering update.

It varies enormously based on scope, team size, and how tightly coupled the legacy system is. NexaLogistics completed their transformation in 15 months with 130 engineers, but they were strategic about sequencing -- customer-facing wins first, core engine second, platform unification third. The critical mistake most teams make is treating modernization as a single big-bang project. Break it into phases with measurable outcomes at each stage. Quick wins in the first 90 days build momentum and credibility for the longer-term work. If you cannot show tangible results within 3 months, your approach may be too ambitious.