On average, companies only use half of their applications daily. Over time, organizations add applications and infrastructure without engaging in efforts to optimize their existing inventory, which inevitably leads to unused or underutilized apps that waste resources and decrease efficiency. Maintenance for these unused applications drives ever-increasing costs over time and can have a dramatic effect on overall IT expenses. Maintenance costs constrain IT budgets and crowd out new projects and innovation that can add real value to the company. The challenge only gets further complicated by merger and acquisition events. Enter: application rationalization.

Wavestone helps clients optimize their application portfolio—from reviewing it to removing outdated, obsolete, or redundant items and defining the to-be application environment. We guide our clients in the best utilization of limited IT resources, providing the greatest business impact at the lowest run cost. We can help simplify, modernize, and transform your current application portfolio, conduct an application rationalization exercise, and build a governance framework to sustain portfolio hygiene, all tailored to suit your objectives.

Application Rationalization Methodology

IT Application Rationalization

 

Our highly-experienced experts at Wavestone will build a business case for technology standardization and strategize your transition plan from current to future state. We will review the current stack against future product roadmap and industry trends and advise on areas where your current technology stack may be an impediment to future product strategy. Most importantly, we will show the impact of standardization on revenues and operating costs and break down implementation costs to define a significant return on investment.

When done successfully, application rationalization can help your IT organization achieve significant savings, drive down future costs exponentially, improve staff skills and capabilities, and increase the productivity of tools and processes.

 

CASE STUDY: Fortune 500 Healthcare Insurance Organization

Baseline apps spend exceeded $150M per year and was delivered through a highly-fragmented post M&A vendor ecosystem. Wavestone led the client to a smaller set of service suppliers who could deliver better service quality at lower costs, all while transforming the environment. Additionally, application development methodologies were shifted from DevOps to agile.

Value: Wavestone reduced company costs by 15% while modernizing their core application platforms, and enabled new customer-focused features critical to the client’s digital transformation.

Strategy Brief

Tech Talks Ep. 5: Application Product Portfolio Rationalization

Modernize your application portfolio to reduce cost and complexity, and deliver business value

Featured Expert


  • Featured Expert - Craig Macgibbon

    Craig Macgibbon

    Managing Director

    • Craig MacGibbon is a diverse senior IT executive with 25 years of experience leading global technology teams in developing strategies and enabling integration, automation, and organizational excellence.
      Read More

 

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