Use the ServiceNow® Application Portfolio Management (APM) application to gain a comprehensive understanding of the applications used in your organization so you can identify redundancies, and decrease budgetary costs. By consolidating applications within the same business function, you can identify applications to modernize or upgrade. APM also helps you decide whether to invest, sustain, or replace applications based on the business need aligned towards the organization goal.

You can address business challenges such as:

• Redundant applications for similar functions.
• Increasing cost of owning and maintaining applications.
• Increasing demand to upgrade the existing applications for new functions.
• Conflict between in-house legacy applications and that of the vendors.
• Inadequate performance because of outdated applications.

Overcome these challenges, improve business functions in an efficient and smooth manner, and optimize cost with these APM processes:

Classify

The existing applications are classified based on their business functions.

Measure

The applications are tangibly defined and measured by gathering metrics such as cost, usage, risk, and quality.

Analyze

The applications are analyzed based on the metrics whether they must be upgraded, replaced, consolidated, or returned. You can make strategic business decisions using data from the platform through assessment reports and dashboards.

Plan

You can plan to achieve the goal by analyzing the application categories for an assessment period and decide whether to invest, sustain, or replace the applications. You can also create an application roadmap to consolidate your business decisions along with the rollout details to a business unit for the current fiscal year.

APM uses the following key solution components:

• Application Classification
  • Focuses on Enterprise Business Applications, which can also include functional modules part of a larger ERP suite.
  • Provides additional attributes to classify applications in a new CI class, Business application, which extends the base Configuration Management Database (CMDB) configuration item.

    The configuration items used in APM are related by establishing a CMDB relationship with each other.

    

  • Captures phased rollout/deployment of applications by business unit or geography.
  • Captures attributes from the referenced Software Model.
• Applications Assessment Framework
  • Indicators to assess the application across dimension such as cost, quality, risk, user satisfaction, and business alignment.
  • Common indicators from ServiceNow applications like Financial Management for costs, ITSM for support issues, PPM for investment details.
• Reports and Dashboards
  • Application Landscape Dashboard
  • Application 360 Dashboard
  • Application Assessment Dashboard
  • Application Strategy Recommendation (bubble chart)
  • Applications Rationalization Roadmap
• Integration with other applications
  • Integrates with Project Portfolio Suite (PPS) to track execution of strategic goals and recommendations.
  • Integrates with Financial Management to assess applications costs and associated breakdowns.
  • Integrates with PPS to assess planned investments for applications.
  • Integrates with ITSM to assess the incidents, problems, and changes for the applications.
  • Integrates with Service Administration to generate an assessment questionnaire to a user or user group who use the business application and can assess its performance.