Application rationalization can be incredibly disruptive for your organization. Discover how you can innovate on your IT landscape without holding back productivity.
Application rationalization means looking at the portfolio of software applications that your organization is currently using and putting it into order. It involves both streamlining out applications that you aren’t using and replacing outdated applications that are no longer a good functional or technical fit.
This serves to dramatically increase efficiency and also save budget by cutting your spending on software you don’t need. That saved budget, however, can then be invested back into new, bleeding-edge software that can drive your operations forward and give you a competitive edge.
It’s win-win, but there is a downside to rationalization projects. Whenever you change your application portfolio, you’ll almost certainly need to migrate your users from one system to another.
Even when this is done as efficiently as possible, it will still act as a distraction from your employees doing their work. Some disruption is unavoidable, but it doesn’t have to be extensive or costly.
Minimizing this disruption requires your team to have a comprehensive understanding of your IT landscape, how it fits together, and where it interfaces with your users. This allows you to create a comprehensive plan for your rationalization project that minimizes disruption to your operations.
To power your application rationalization initiative using SAP LeanIX, download our free application rationalization success kit:
DOWNLOAD: Application Rationalization Success Kit
What Is Application Rationalization?
Application rationalization is the process of cataloging all the software applications that your business is leveraging. You can then consider whether this selection of tools is the best you can afford to drive you towards your strategic goals.
This will often involve using Gartner’s TIME methodology to assess each of your applications on a matrix based on how good a technical and functional fit the software is for your organization. An application that is a poor technical fit will not be of sufficient quality and will need to be replaced, while a low functional fit means the app isn’t right for your needs and an alternative solution needs to be found.
DOWNLOAD: Applying the Gartner TIME Framework for Application Rationalization
Under TIME, you would categorize each application under one of four areas:
- Applications with high technical fit, but low functional fit will be Tolerated - accepted in their current state for the time being
- Applications with high technical fit and high functional fit will be Invested-in to gain maximum value from these high-priority applications
- Applications with low technical fit and high functional fit will be Migrated - replaced with better applications
- Applications with low technical fit and low functional fit will be Eliminated - removed and not replaced
Each of these four categories and their corresponding activity will cause disruption in its own way. For example:
- Tolerated applications will continue to have a low functional fit, so not be right for their prescribed function
- Invested-in applications may be rolled out to new teams or additional features may be added that will require retraining
- Migrated applications will need to have their data transitioned to a new platform, and users will need to be trained in the new system
- Eliminated applications will hopefully no longer be used, but any remaining users will lose access to the system and need to find other ways to do their work
As such, almost all your application rationalization activities will inevitably cause disruption to your users. The key for enterprise architects undertaking application rationalization is, therefore, to minimize that disruption.
Disruption Is Money
Application rationalization, as we have established, inevitably causes disruption for your users. Why, however, is that such a bad thing?
It can be very easy for enterprise architects focused on upgrading their organization’s IT landscape to forget about the very real downside to such projects. After all, the day-to-day work of your users is how you generate revenue and why your business exists.
Every time your users have to stop working to train in the use of a new system or face downtime for their toolset, they aren’t working on making revenue. Even though upgrading their tools will eventually make them more efficient in the long-term, it will reduce their productivity in the short-term while they become experts in their new toolset.
Equally, the longer you put off reworking your application portfolio, the more your inefficient toolset will hold back your employees’ productivity. Inevitably, you need to choose between short-term disruption of your operations or their long-term degradation.
Making this choice, however, becomes more pressing when you realize that no application rationalization initiative is a one-off. Application rationalization is a constant process of iterating your software portfolio to keep up with ever-evolving technology innovation and market trends.
Constant application rationalization therefore means constant disruption to your operations. A single period of operational disruption can be written off as a loss, but constant losses of productivity can rapidly drive you out of business
The key to minimizing disruption to preserve your operations is to know precisely how much disruption your application rationalization initiative will cause your users and the best time and method of carrying out your work to preserve as much of their productivity as possible. Gathering this intelligence requires a repository to store and organize your enterprise architecture data.
SAP LeanIX For Application Rationalization
SAP LeanIX makes planning your application rationalization initiatives completely intuitive. Each of your applications has its own fact sheet within our solution, populated with manual and live data, with the option to tag them according to the TIME matrix.
Combining all this data allows you to see at a glance what applications are dependent on others due for Elimination or Migration. This means you can plan to surgically remove legacy applications from your estate, rather than rip them roughly out and discover the disruptive consequences later.
The information in the fact sheets can also include automated user surveys, so you can discover first-hand what your users’ opinions and needs are before you make any changes. You can then ensure that your initiatives cause the absolute minimum disruption to your ongoing operations and maintain your revenue while you enhance your productivity in the long term as well.
To power your application rationalization initiative using SAP LeanIX, download our free application rationalization success kit:
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