APC - the complete Application Portfolio Management tool
Management and efficiency of an organisation’s (company or government agency) application portfolio has major impact when balancing business value of IT with cost and risk.
Application Portfolio Cockpit (APC) is a complete cloud-based solution for an organisation’s business and IT to strategically and tactically manage; thereby continuously implement the streamlining of its application portfolio and lifecycle management.
Govern the Application Portfolio with APC by
Overview
APC enables you to get a complete overview on the current landscape of your application portfolio and individual applications.
Strategy
Strategy, advice and recommendations on changes to build roadmaps and plans that utilize opportunities and minimize the risks.
Process
A well-defined process and support on how to continuously work with your application portfolio, and how to reach highest possible gain based on your priorities.
The Features
APC comes with several predefined features, as well as customizable content. Below is short description of the main features.
Click the specific feature for detailed information.
Govern application lifecycles
APC offers several pre-defined features on an application level, as well as customizable content and methodologies to suit your specific needs. This includes detailed information attributes such as application information, financial information, governance, life cycle states, interdependencies and project timelines and much more. In addition to this, APC gives application-specific advice and strategies on risks and opportunities which enables data driven decisions and a clear overview on the situation.
Application Portfolio Intelligence
Analytic Center is an interactive business analytics feature within APC. The powerful analytics feature provides visualization of the data and enables the organisation to immediately get and share key insights about the overall application portfolio as well as drill down to understand the underlying details.
Portfolio Analysis
Integrated with several pre-defined methodologies and advice for portfolio analysis, as well as the ability to customize according to the specific needs of an organisation. APC enables real-time overview of the application portfolio, which enables data-driven decisions and a clearer understanding of the current situation and creation of sub-portfolio roadmaps and plans.
IT Service Catalogue
The ITIL-based APC service catalogue feature enables an IT-organisation to build and manage its entire catalogue of services according to its business. The interdependencies between applications and services is the key, as well as, the total governance of the catalogue.
The methods
Standardized and pre-defined methods are key to a fast track to value realization. APC provides a set of pre-defined methods that can be further customized for the organisation´s specific demands. Type of pre-defined methods are:
- Optimization and rationalization analysis methods
- Selective and bimodal sourcing methods based on Krajlic's and Gelderman &
van Weele's sourcing models - Risk analysis methods based on on MIT's Sloan Center's "IT risk pyramid"
- Technology Business Management (TBM) based methods for cost transparency
The process
The tool comes with a well-defined process on how to continuously work with and manage your application portfolio. The process is well-defined for both portfolio and application levels, and makes the step to integrate APC with the organisations' way of working much simpler.
THE INFORMATION
Effective information management to ensure high quality of the applications' information is key in application portfolio management.
APC provides:
STRUCTURE AND ATTRIBUTES
ITIL-based structures and attributes are provided in the tool to enable fast path to value. Extensive customization features empower adaption to the organisations’ specific requirements.
ACQUISITION AND MAINTENACE
Distributed information gathering, import and export functions, automated support, user-friendly UI and information governance features enable effective information acquisition and maintenance.
QUALITY ASSURANCE
Logs that contain record of changes made and by whom, standard reports of status and quality of information, centralized definitions and validations criteria of application and portfolio attributes provides extensive support to enable high quality of data and information.
SECURITY AND CONFIDENTIALITY
Security and confidentiality are key factors. APC complies with cloud-based security standards, practices and follows the privacy requirements.
EXTERNAL INFORMATION
Links to external application information like supplier sites, documents enable collection of and direct access to vital external application information.
Our client's experiences
Our client's experience an increased transparency and agility with a clear reduction of costs and operational risks
The direct benefits experienced by our APC-client's shows that 10-15% of the applications in the portfolio can be closed-down immediately and a mid-term potential of an additional 20-30%. The application maintenance and operations cost was cut by 15-30 % just by reduction of redundancy and functional overlaps. Operational risks were reduced due to identification of non-supported applications and operating systems, usually about 20-35 % of the applications.
Indirect benefits gained by our APC-client's are increased transparency and control over the portfolio of applications, ability to create based insights and plans between IT and business and real-time access to application information to support operations as well as strategic and tactical planning.