What is Application Strategy Alignment?

Definition of Application Strategy Alignment

Application Strategy Alignment is a subgenre of Strategy Alignment that is of utmost importance not only for business but also for almost every aspect of different dynamics in the world. Application Strategy Alignment is simply evaluating the applications currently in use of a company as for their overall business value for the goals of the company. An organizational alignment in a company could be exemplified as evaluating necessary departments (Informative Technology, Human Resources, Business Development etc.) for how they are doing to attain success, resulting in optimization of the business growth. This could also be called Enterprise Architecture.

Similarly, Application Strategy Alignment evaluates software applications if they are fit for a company’s needs and aims. For example, if a company target aggressive growth via growth hacking, software used by the IT department would be the key element in conducting such an Application Strategy Alignment. Yet, there are often multiple aims of a company and that’s why a comprehensive approach towards applications should be employed for better results.

Singling out departments and the software would work from case to case, but as a business culture, overall control and monitoring of the software applications would certainly benefit in the long run. Businesses can also align their software with their strategy if they are on the verge of starting a broadscale digital transformation: Cloud Migration, let’s say. Application Portfolio Management is ofttimes gets associated with Application Strategy Alignment. That’s because APM, the abbreviation of Application Portfolio Management, provides an overall picture of a company’s digital assets and their performance. In order to analyse the business success of a company for Application Strategy Alignment, data about the software could be provided by APM software.

How to do Application Strategy Alignment?

In order to conduct efficient Application Strategy Alignment, a company should find profound answers to these three strategic questions below.

What are the goals of this company?

What a critical question this is! It has everything to do with. A business shapes all its architecture over the answer to this question. However, let’s not overgeneralize in this case. For Application Strategy Alignment, a business should point out its current aims on top of the agenda. User acquisition, business diversification, better customer relations… these and many more different business goals could be of interest depending on the structure of a company. First things first: a company should decide!

What software this company is using?

As for the second step, a business should compile all the applications it owns and uses. A visible IT landscape not only facilitates Application Strategy Alignment but also offer a general insight into the company for many decisions to come in the future.

Compiling all the software and evaluating them according to business-critical metrics is the raison d’etre of Application Portfolio Management. APM, short for Application Portfolio Management, is a framework for monitoring and managing all the software in a company. With the Application Portfolio Management approach, an Application Inventory is created, meaning the company’s applications are listed and stored altogether. Thus, such comprehensive visibility helps people that make the decisions to better understand the IT architecture by providing both responsiveness and detailed info.

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Does the software in use help the company to attain the success it wishes?

Having carefully decided the business goals and managed the Application Inventory, it’s time to compare and analyse. Certain software is suited best for specific aims. This alignment can be realized with the info APM provides. APM also ensures business fitness, technical fitness, cost-efficiency and much more insight into a company’s IT landscape, naturally simplifying it.

How does Application Portfolio Management Benefit Application Strategy Alignment?

There are several aspects of the accord between APM and Application Strategy Alignment on why APM is a good fit for such a process.

1. Data with high business value can be provided by APM methodology.
2. Cost-effective strategies can be employed once APM is put to use to analyse the financial valency of software.
3. Identifying software that deserves an investment becomes easier with grounded data.
4. Overall insight into the IT landscape would speed up the Readiness Check a company goes through before re-platforming or rehosting.
5. A better financial IT budgeting can be realised altogether, ensuring allocating more budget for Application Strategy Alignment.
6. Having conducted the Application Strategy Alignment, the same data could be beneficial to a comprehensive Business Strategy Planning for the next step.