7 Benefits of Application Portfolio Management You Need to Know

Suppose your company bought the same software license twice (or seven times). Sounds familiar, right? This situation is common for countless organizations. Buying applications is easier than ever - you don't even have to type in payment details anymore. A quick credit card scan with your phone camera does the job. What's lacking is a system to manage your purchases.

Smart businesses must have a comprehensive overview of their software portfolio. Otherwise, they risk spending time and resources on ineffective applications and duplicate technology. But managing application inventory via Excel spreadsheets is far from appealing. In this post, we list how an effective APM system can help you optimize resource allocation.

What is Application Portfolio Management?

Application Portfolio Management (APM) is the process of overseeing, classifying, and evaluating an organization's application inventory. APM helps analyze your application landscape in real-time, preventing redundant purchases and cutting costs. This helps business owners optimize their IT resources and get their money's worth.

Redundant applications are eliminated. What's left is evaluated in terms of business quality and IT value. A thorough APM process will leave you with the best-performing applications. Your portfolio of high-quality, efficient software will increase productivity and boost revenue.

7 Crucial Benefits of Application Portfolio Management

1. Eliminates Duplicate Applications
2. Boosts Investment Value
3. Tracks Application Lifecycles
4. Helps Manage Licenses
5. Bridges Communication Gaps
6. Reduces IT Risk
7. Promotes User Feedback

Eliminates Duplicate Applications

APM helps determine redundant applications. Application inventories identify repetition, so IT staff can terminate duplicate licenses and shift user accounts to a single source. This will cut license costs and simplify your IT architecture.

Boosts Investment Value

APM promotes using Gartner's TIME Model, a systematic assessment of applications based on business value and IT quality. This analysis helps determine whether to keep, migrate, discard, or further invest in an application.

Tracks Application Lifecycles

After employing the TIME model, you'll get a clear view of which applications pertain to which lifecycle stage. Which software is reaching end-of-life? Are there any features that are crucial to your business? If so, you can start planning for replacements.

Helps Manage Licenses

APM software helps you track license expiry dates, helping you plan for renewals in advance. Loggle provides a calendar feature, where you can oversee upcoming renewals and receive email notifications. This prevents disruptions in the workplace and helps your accounting department budget.

Bridges Communication Gaps

Having an up-to-date application inventory prevents unnecessary purchases that happen because of miscommunication among departments. Every stakeholder in your business will have access to a single source of truth, meaning purchasing decisions will rely on real-time, reliable data.

Reduces IT Risk

The systematic evaluation of applications means thorough quality control. This ensures your business processes aren't at risk from unsecured, unreliable, or out-of-date software.

Promotes User Feedback

An APM tool like Loggle is a great way to get user feedback from your employees. Each application has a 'comments' section where relevant parties can provide snippets on user experience. Technical incidents and correspondence with IT support are also logged. This helps determine the effectiveness of the software, which ultimately decides whether to keep or eliminate the product.

Application Portfolio Management Tool

Application Portfolio Management (APM) tool is a solution that contains the necessary functions to perform an integrated application management and monitoring process. For medium and large businesses, it is not possible to manage application inventories via spreadsheets.

Loggle, IT asset management software, offers application portfolio management software. With Loggle, you can manage your application inventory in detail on a single platform and gain insights that will shape your IT environment.

Wrapping Up

Absent a systematic approach for managing inventory, businesses risk miscommunication about existing and necessary software. Application Portfolio Management helps you eliminate duplicate applications, reduce IT risk, boost investment value, and manage applications' lifecycle.

An APM tool provides even more value. Loggle has all the benefits of APM while also allowing you to collect feedback from application users. It prevents communication gaps between stakeholders, making for a more efficient IT landscape. For more information on streamlining your application portfolio, leave us your details and we'll get back to you shortly!