Application Portfolio Optimization
Portfolio optimization cannot be on applications - it has to be on specific business scenarios.
Within the changing business scenarios, IT applications and assets are getting more and more pivotal for the maximized business performance of an organization. The growing importance of IT applications and infrastructure have pushed organizations to lookout for ways to optimize their IT applications portfolio.
HCL Application Portfolio Optimization practice - Overview
Application Portfolio Optimization (APO) services at HCL follow a structured approach to optimize the IT applications and assets of the customer organization. We help our customers to reduce their maintenance and development lifecycle costs and improve technology investment decisions. Our Application Portfolio outsourcing services offer:
- Perform suitability health check of applications
- Identify and develop mitigation plan
- Estimate cost reductions through complete financial analysis
- Identify develop program and knowledge transition plan
HCL's APO practice help sort through customers innovate their business processes without disrupting daily operations, reduce costs and add functionality to existing applications. Our services address your need of skilled resource pool both for legacy and modern systems and technologies, improved response time, better service orientation and webicize your legacy systems in an objective and numerical manner & crystallizes a plan of action.
Interesting Industry Insights
CIOs today are loaded with diversified and complex problems when it comes to manage their Applications Portfolio:
- Shadow IT creating data integrity and regulatory compliance problems resulting in uncontrolled costs
- IT investments without considering long term strategies & business value derived
- Poor user experience and responsiveness
- Unaddressed functionality gaps
- Lack of documentation
- Flooded with different applications addressing same business functions
- Integration and license costs are above acceptable limits
- Hundreds of aging open tickets for functional enhancement
The primary concerns for enterprises while making a decision to outsource the IT systems and applications are:
- Cost reduction
- Architecture simplification
- Alignment
- Outsourcing prioritization
- Optimization
The top IT management and technology priorities that drive the CIOs' strategies and decisions are:
- Aligning IT with business goals and creating new business oportunities
- IT-enabled process improvement including complete automation
- Business Continuity/ Risk Management
- Integrating/enhancing existing systems and processes
- Ensuring data security and integrity
- Business intelligence
- New business services/products like Web services
Keeping in mind the priorities, HCL has created a framework for the function of the CIO. The CIO function is split into four major buckets, namely:
Align: The essence of this function is to ensure that information supports the underlying business processes and presents opportunities to extend the business model, that it is secure and yet available to all stakeholders
Optimize: Under this function, the CIO function ensures that all waste is eliminated and that the funds are spent on high priority items
Select: This function enables the CIO to make choices on the type of organization for the CIO function to the type of vendorship and outsourcing model that the CIO function will adopt. Included here are the technical and tool choices that the CIO needs to make in order to do what is core to the CIO function.
Deliver: Under deliver the CIO function ensures that services are provided in a managed manner using ITIL processes, new functions are developed using proper SDLC and the functionality is deployed using change management discipline on a platform that supports the above.
The CIO performs these four functions under a robust governance structure with metrics and performance measures in place.
HCL Solution
Our APO solutions are devised to cater your business priorities and goals. We provide back to back APO solutions including:
- Re-engineer, enhance, integrate applications for improving efficiency
- Migrate application weak on technical quality to latest technology platforms
- Replace applications with industry standard products
- Consolidate applications
- Retire applications
- Upgrade s/w and h/w platforms
- Outsource applications
Our APO services equip CIOs with Tools to Align IT to Business via proper Governance, Portfolio & Instance Modernization & Consolidation, and Outsourcing.
HCL's unique APO methodology and services help you attain:
- Optimized applications by identifying under-utilized, redundant and obsolete application
- Reduced maintenance and development life cycle costs and improve technology investment decisions
- Well-managed resource utilization that support your business goals
- Delivers plan and directions for future actions for IT organization
- Reduced development and maintenance costs, avoidance of cost on unnecessary applications and projects
- Availability of core technology skills
- Improved quality of service, effective governance through visibility dashboard
- Tools to enhance productivity and efficiency
- Lean and well integrated applications portfolio
- Stable and reliable Applications normalized on Function, Technical and Management quality
- Reduced time-to-market, time-to-customer
Our APO offerings gain their uniqueness from our exhaustive expertise and independent practice
- APO is independent of ADM, Infra & BPO engagements
- APO can be applied in clients with 3rd party incumbents
- APO is Applicable on Numerous Infrastructure Initiatives
- Delivers Value to Client via Infrastructure APO Evaluate Business Aptness (FQ), Technical Quality (TQ) & Process Maturity (MQ)
- Stratify Applications in Terms of: Healthy, Must Go, Needs Technical Improvements, In-Depth Analysis Required
Evaluate Business Aptness (FQ), Technical Quality (TQ) & Process Maturity (MQ).
Stratify Applications in Terms of: Healthy, Must Go, Needs Technical Improvements, In-Depth Analysis Required.
Service Offerings
HCL's APO strategy has the following key components which make it a comprehensive offering:
Our APO approach paves a way to transform your IT Application environment to make your processes future-ready, provide long-term competitive advantage, and maximize ROI. HCL offers two unique transformation frameworks:
Proprietary Methodology
HCL's proprietary APO methodology has been developed based on the experience derived from working with large customers having complex IT architectures. APO evaluates applications on a comprehensive set of intrinsic characteristics like functional quality (FQ), technical quality (TQ), management quality (MQ), scalability, modularity, and stability rather than looking at applications as a static inventory of programs, objects and files. Such rigorous analysis helps in classifying the applications into categories like healthy, must-go, and needs technical or functional improvements.
Tools
PRISMTM HCL's APO tool is an in-house web-based tool that helps reduce subjectivity and aids in consistency, and in logical decision-making.
