Strategy
As your business strategy and activity change, applications evolve. The application portfolio becomes increasingly complex as new applications arrive, existing applications are modified and new applications are developed.
Today, all your company activity that is based on the successful implementation of business processes rests largely on the application portfolio. If applications are not able to do the job, the result is a loss of effectiveness. However, this portfolio evolves over time. Knowing and understanding it facilitates making adequate decisions for the long term. Within a framework of good governance, the portfolio must be piloted or it will risk being out of phase with your business processes, thus causing a loss in efficiency and competitive advantage.
Piloting the application portfolio must therefore have as its goal the assurance of conformity to business needs for the short, mid and long term. Based on technical, economic, business and human feedback, you decide on actions to be taken, for instance, to improve quality. To do this, you analyze factors such as the applications with the worst quality record, why users complain about them to the help desk, and trouble tickets associated to operation and performance.
Thanks to IT4®, you will be able to tell whether this is due to technical aspects only, to an operating defect or to a bug.
For the first time, IT4® ties together applications, operations and business goals
IT4® helps you pilot your application portfolio over the mid term. At regular intervals – for example, every six months – you can carry out an analysis of the application portfolio to identify where risks are located or which actions should be carried out to develop business and how to allocate the necessary budget.
Your users will have a clear idea of what the application portfolio currently provides, of which actions should be done and of how this will benefit the users. Business piloting of applications is done, for example, by associating goals and business indicators to application evaluation and indicators. This association allows tying together applications, the IT system and company operational and business objectives in a highly effective way.
Pertinent piloting indicators and reports are defined during a study made by IT4Control or a certified partner and the company project team. This information, which is the basis for making decisions, will be validated by all participants and then applied at all levels according to needs. It will enable users to measure the gap between their expectations and the current situation and to determine the priorities for maintenance operations, actions concerning architecture and application upgrading in a way that will enhance the pertinence of the application portfolio.
This could lead to removing certain applications or components, consolidating the infrastructure, carrying out an operational development, eliminate redundant applications, externalize non-critical applications, etc.
Decide according to business value
The best way to decide on evolution is to concentrate on the business value of applications. IT4® and its partners rely on Application Portfolio Management methodology and the IT4® solution featuring 4APM® functionality to define the business value of applications and position them with respect to each other. This overall view is completed by taking into account technological and economic value.
Pilot implementation of decisions and modernization plans
IT4® supplies the means to pilot and ensure implementation of decisions and modernization plans. The functionality provided by 4PPM® lets you link applications to modernization projects. Thanks to IT4®, your information system will become part of a continuous improvement loop that is synonymous with good governance.
Transform the Information System
The IT4® solution pilots transformation of the IT system and its migration from an existing situation toward the desired target, in order to optimize IT and reduce costs
Transforming applications implies following both evolution requests and application evolution projects. IT4® offers solutions for successfully monitoring each of these aspects.
Transformation involves taking into account evolution requests – most notably, operational requests – that are necessary to adapt the applications to business process requirements. These requests can be classified according to their business, technical, etc. priority. Next, their successful handling depends on different factors. Among these, we can list piloting of request processing, which entails proper attribution of requests, and follow-up all the way to resolution or delivery. Thus, it is useful to attribute these requests according to technical competence required.
Request processing can be managed according to request typology. For example, we will attribute SAP requests to the SAP competence center. We can also attribute them according to the speed required for processing user requests of the same type or according to the productivity of persons or service desks.
Attribution of requests can be done according to different criteria that are tied to skills, processing costs, geography, etc.; in the case where the company uses externalization, it can compare costs with productivity. Thus, company teams may involve a higher cost but be more productive and efficient.
Follow projects
Projects are the logical consequence of IT system transformation. It is necessary to tie them to applications and to integrate the contribution of each project at the level of operations, business processes, technical concerns, security, etc.
Consequently, an application will be characterized by its existing state, as well as by its history in terms of projects or requests. Being able to access a list of documented functions and of documentation in general will allow optimizing future development work, thus facilitating its transformation.