Improve business value, IT strategy and cut costs
Application Portfolio Management (APM) adapts financial portfolio management concepts to justify and measure the business value of IT applications.
The financial benefits are compared to the costs for maintenance, support and infrastructure as well as risks of operations. APM can be a driving initiative as a part of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) program. Moreover, an APM program can be continuously developed into a full EA governance framework if not available. The BPM-X APM solution resides in an enterprise information repository and combines Microsoft tools like Visio®, Excel® and SharePoint® to describe, visualize, analyze, monitor and plan the application portfolio. With a profound knowledge of your organization’s application portfolio, you are sure to take the right IT decisions, drive IT change, management projects and the application lifecycle aligned with your company’s capabilities for changes in terms of the IT strategy.
Benefits of using APM
Use-cases for APM are for example finding systems that perform similar function, identify application silos in the application landscape for more transparency and value delivered to the business. This to eliminate redundant functionality or “shelfware” and thereby reduce maintenance and support costs. Finally streamline the application portfolio for strategic fit to replace legacy by standard software.
Strategic advantages
- Plan and perform business and IT alignment and transformation.
- Develop the application portfolio alongside the organization’s strategic directions and objectives.
- Identify and lower risks of operations.
Economic profits
- Find optimization potentials to lower maintenance and support costs.
- Improve the efficiency and business value of applications supporting business capabilities.
- Adapt APM incrementally with an out-of-the-box information model and easy customization.
Objectives for APM
The main objectives for APM are:
- Collect data for an information model of applications, supported organizations and business functions stored in a central repository.
- Assess applications portfolio regarding business value, costs and risks of operation.
- Plan the application’s lifecycle and roadmaps for business and IT transformation.
Using industry standards
Industry standard enterprise architecture frameworks like TOGAF and modeling languages like ArchiMate from The Open Group (www.opengroup.org) can be used to describe the business architecture of an organization’s processes, business functions and applications supporting IT system architecture. Use of process frameworks like APQC’s Process Capability Framework (PCF, see www.apqc.org), SAP reference capability maps from the Business Process Repository (BPR) or the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) of the Supply Chain Council (supply-chain.org) can be used to describe the business processes and capabilities of the organization.
Models for architecture of applications and organization
Technology
BPM-X’s APM solution features Visio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 and also supports the prior version of the tools. The solution is built on a 4-tier architecture using MS-SQL as repository, web service application server for managing APM business logic, SharePoint® for collaboration and data governance, Microsoft BI services for analytics and Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer as front-ends.
Describe business value and IT strategic fit with scorecards
Charts visualizing various application key performance indicators
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