What is Software Evaluation?

Software expenditures constitute a significant portion of companies' technology investments. Companies automate most of their manual processes with software applications to speed up their current operational processes and improve the customer experience. So, is every software purchased productive for the business?

The answer is of course no. Applications purchased without proper analysis are not efficient for businesses. In addition, an application may have become dysfunctional over time as the company's business processes have changed. For this reason, companies need to analyze and evaluate their software inventories. This is where software evaluation comes into play.

Definition of Software Evaluation

Software evaluation is the process of measuring the performance and utility of software assets in businesses' inventories. The purpose of software evaluation is to detect dysfunctional and unused software. Companies can optimize their costs by discarding software with low IT value. So, with these savings, they can make more efficient IT investments. This process holistically supports increasing IT efficiency.

What are the Software Evaluation Criteria?

The software evaluation process can be applied for software in existing inventory and for software to be newly purchased. In order to properly evaluate a software, the need must first be clearly identified. For what need was this application purchased or will be purchased? And what exactly is expected from this application? All these questions must be answered clearly.

After determining their needs clearly, companies should analyze whether the software they purchase has these functions. Thus, companies can measure the capacity of the software. If the software does not meet the needs of the company, it was purchased without proper analysis. This software must be disposed of and replaced with another software.

One of the important points that businesses should pay attention to in order to successfully realize the digital transformation process is compatibility between systems. If the purchased application is not compatible with the current system and other applications, it will cause many problems and ultimately dysfunction. For this reason, businesses must examine the compatibility of software assets with other software, hardware and systems when evaluating software inventory.

No business has an unlimited IT budget. CIO and IT managers in companies aim to use their limited IT budgets in the most efficient way. Therefore, the cost is one of the key metrics in the software evaluation process. A decision should be made by examining the IT value and cost of the software together. In this process, companies must also base the costs of other software with the same function in this evaluation process.

Understanding the Value of Application Portfolio Management

Relationship Between Application Portfolio Management and Software Evaluation

Application Portfolio Management is the process of building inventories of on-premise, cloud, SaaS and all other software types owned by businesses and managing them throughout their lifecycle. Companies use the data they will obtain by applying software asset management or application portfolio management in the software evaluation process. APM and SAM are methodologies, not one-time processes. For this reason, companies regularly collect data from their APM and Software Asset Management processes. Thus, they are protected from potential mistakes in the software evaluation process.

Strategic Benefits of Software Asset Management