IT Rationalization: Take Control of Your Software
Your organization’s ever-growing software needs may feel like a bottomless pit. To continually feed those needs, you can end up taking steps that lead to software bloat: overbuying an inventory of applications that are spread out all over the place, distributed via loosely managed deployment formats. The provisioning nightmares, training, and license compliance issues that follow are like an indigestion keeping you up at night. All this bloat causes confusion, and unnecessary IT workload. Just think about the sunken costs and lack of ability to generate business intelligence! So, what can you do? One cannot simply toss out years of effort and unplug existing software without giving some thought to the matter.
The solution to this predicament is the process of IT Rationalization. IT Rationalization offers companies a way to tap into economies of scale and lower operating costs by streamlining software usage across the organization and its teams. It also reduces your dependence on costly IT infrastructure. And it provides improvements to business intelligence capabilities you need.
There is no one grand plan that can optimize all aspects of an enterprise’s modernization strategy and operational efficiency. But there are ways to break down the IT rationalization process into sizeable chunks. Here’s how software rationalization works. Here’s how it works.
- Inventory
- Assessment
- Streamline
Inventory counts
The first step to software rationalization is to identify what exists, where it exists, who’s using it, and how everything is deployed. This can be time-consuming, and probably eye-opening. Companies can increase their profitability 20%–50% or more through careful inventory control.1
Strategic vendor management needs to be a part of your inventory counts, as you will need to assess your current IT vendors and find any overlap between their solutions.
Assessment for a smarter balance
Evaluate the nature, quality and ability of your application portfolio. Look beyond the obvious and examine your apps as well as your business processes to determine where improvements should be made, and what can be rationalized. Is there an overlap? Are there apps that are overutilized or underutilized? How much shelfware do you have (meaning nobody uses it)? And give some thought to objective KPIs like cost, risk, and vendor dependency.
Consider the advantages of a cloud solution. The license tracking and management capabilities built into LoadSpring Cloud Platform will let you see which software is being used, who is using it, and the exact location from which they are accessing it.
Streamline for success
It’s never easy to rip out an existing system and to replace it with a new one. After all, just think of the invested time, effort, and money put into applications that you selected with loving care and attention to provide your team project management solutions to be more productive. Rank your applications based on their value and their functional fitness within the organization. In cloud-based project management software for instance, two different vendors may offer similar capabilities, but different user experiences. Find out which one pleases your users best. When judgment calls are made, remove the low-value applications and replace them with modern, high business value applications and get better ROI.
LoadSpring Cloud Platform and IT Rationalization
Having looked at the places where avoidable costs can hide and where systems can be streamlined, you should be ready to start the software rationalization process and look for ways to get some money back into the budget. Determining what enterprise apps should be in the cloud as part of your digital transformation strategy is a logical next step. Imagine having the ability to research, purchase and deploy from within your cloud platform. Wouldn’t it also be nice to monitor, and capture data on app-driven KPIs from that same platform? In other words – your IT Rationalization can go from a huge undertaking to a highly streamlined process.
You can expect more, get more, and do more with LoadSpring Cloud Platform. We will guide you every step of the way. We take the time do an application rationalization, build a secure and fully supported ecosystem, and ensure your apps are deployed fast and to the right teams. Call +1 978.685.9715 and get started today.
Sources
1. Entrepreneur, “The 4 Essential Elements Inventory”
