Application Portfolio Management Best Practices

If we were to give a name to the era we live in, the "age of technology" would undoubtedly be one of the strongest candidates. We live in a period where software directs our lives and automates our manual processes. While there are dozens of different software that we actively use in our daily lives, both on computers and mobile devices, it should not be surprising that this number reaches hundreds in business life.

Business Processes Automate with Applications

According to the report of the research and consultancy company Gartner, spending on information technologies has reached its peak in the last ten years. Companies are investing more in the digital business world to improve their operational processes and prevent unexpected disruptions.

Software applications started to automate business processes in all areas from accounting to finance, from human resources to logistics processes, from warehouse management to customer relations. In the coming years, businesses are expected to invest and purchase applications for most of the business processes that are now manual.

How Do Companies Avoid Application Complexity?

Digital transformation is not limited to the digitization of manual processes. Digital transformation also requires cultural transformation. In this direction, businesses needed to change their strategy of managing and monitoring the ever-growing IT structure.

Because of the increase in the number of applications in companies' inventories, companies could start no longer keep track of what they have. This resulted in "application complexity". Application complexity, also known as software complexity, covers the inability to manage application inventory in companies, making systems cumbersome and increasing costs.

• Uncontrolled and highly complex application portfolios are likely to encounter the following situations:
• Multiple applications doing the same job due to capability conflicts
• Unsupported or specially developed applications
• High cost and/or risky applications
• Applications that have become dysfunctional due to no need for work

What is Application Portfolio Management (APM)?

The concept of application portfolio management, which emerged towards the end of the 20th century, covers the business processes carried out to monitor, manage and measure the applications owned by companies.

Application portfolio management, in the simplest terms, increases the visibility of portfolios of IT applications, allowing companies to view their current inventories from a broad perspective. Although APM is basically understood as keeping a list of applications, when we go into a little detail; it is a process that seeks answers to various questions.

How Do You Implement Application Portfolio Management?

Application portfolio management is more than a portfolio and is not a one-time operation. APM is a culture that must be adopted in companies. APM aims to build an inventory of applications that are most appropriate and cost-effective to business priorities and needs. We will share with you the best practices for effective application portfolio management.

1-Discover Your Applications

An APM process first begins with the creation of an application inventory. It should be noted that this is not a one-time operation. Because the application inventory should always be kept up to date. When companies acquire a new app or dispose of an app, they must update it in inventory.

If the application inventory is correct, it is the most important factor that determines the accuracy in the other stages of the process. For this reason, companies should inform all company employees while creating an inventory and ask them to support this inventory creation process. At this stage, regardless of on-premise, cloud, or SaaS, all applications that companies have should be added to this inventory.

2-Detail Your Application Inventory

We said that APM is much more than an application inventory. Therefore, at this stage, companies need to detail their application inventory. This detailing differs from company to company, but in general, an application inventory must be able to answer the following questions.

• What is the type of application?
• What is the licensing type of the application?
• For which department was the application purchased?
• How many licenses are there for the application?
• When was the app purchased?
• How much does the app cost to purchase?
• Are there any additional costs for the application?
• What is the work capacity of the application?
• What is the criticality level of the application?
• What is the IT value of the application?

3-Evaluate Your Applications based on IT Value and Cost

Businesses must determine their business priorities and needs before they begin to evaluate their current inventories. Application portfolio management provides data and insights that help businesses shape their IT environments and IT investments.

One of the most adopted methods in the evaluation process of an application is Gartner's TIME model. In summary, the TIME model aims to ultimately make one of the following four decisions for each application:

• Tolerate: The application's business capacity and IT value are sufficient according to its cost. The application may remain in the company inventory.
• Invest: The application's contribution to business processes is very efficient. The app should remain in the company's app portfolio. In addition, the technology leader can increase the IT value of the application by deciding to invest in this application.
• Migrate: The app's functions are essential for the company. However, the company is not satisfied with the supplier of the application due to reasons such as technology and maintenance support. The application must be replaced with an equivalent application.
• Eliminate: There is no need for an application in the company or there is a different application with the same capability. The company must dispose of the app. Because this application is now an unnecessary expense for the company.

Application Portfolio Management Software

When application portfolio management was first adopted in companies, companies preferred spreadsheets. Although spreadsheets support the APM processes of companies, even if limited, they became dysfunctional with the complexity of IT structures. Application portfolio management software is a solution developed for businesses to manage their APM strategies more effectively from a central platform.

IT asset management solutions provider Loggle, with its Application Portfolio Management Tool, enables businesses to manage their APM processes end-to-end from a single platform. You can contact us to manage your applications throughout the application lifecycle with Loggle.