# Next steps for historian modernization
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Review your existing and required capabilities for data historians. Contact [AWS Professional Services](https://pages.awscloud.com/AWS-Professional-Services.html) for support with identifying or building your business use cases or with implementing your modernized historian architecture. We recommend that you do the following on your historian modernization journey:

1. **Develop a comprehensive modernization narrative** – Outline the history of your organization, its mission, and the outcomes that you want to achieve with historian modernization.

1. **Develop a digital archive of data sources** – Create a digital archive of all of the data sources that contain your organization's historical data and artifacts. Although the majority of data comes from manufacturing systems and existing on-premises databases and historians, it is important to collect and record contextual data for all of the assets.

1. **Use technology to present the narrative** – Present the narrative in an engaging and informative way, such as using digital storytelling and interactive multimedia.

1. **Develop an outreach program** – Engage the stakeholders in your organization and promote historian modernization to a wider audience. Document the high-level business use cases, evaluate the ROI, and prioritize the use cases.

1. **Evaluate the impact** – Assess the effects of historian modernization in your organization and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Historian modernization is a critical part of any manufacturing organization's digital transformation strategy. The [best practices](best-practices.md) in this guide are designed to help organizations succeed with historian modernization and keep pace with the demands of modern manufacturing.