Best Application Portfolio Management Software
Application portfolio management software allows administrative users to unify on-premises and SaaS applications to eliminate redundant systems and improve organization and efficiency. These tools provide a console for mapping an organization’s application landscape. The software helps users standardize technologies, rationalize use cases, and align service level agreements. They integrate with data from the applications in use to help IT managers identify an application’s value, reduce technology overlap, and mitigate risks. The tools present the landscape in a workflow or mapping model, which allows users to group technologies by use or department and visualize their entire company’s software and service stack.
There is a strong relationship between application portfolio management solutions and enterprise architecture software. The difference lies in the fact that application portfolio management tools are geared toward aligning technologies in place, while enterprise architecture tools are inclined toward project planning and managing technological execution, policies, and organization.
To qualify for inclusion in the Application Portfolio Management category, a product must:
Best Application Portfolio Management Software At A Glance
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- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
SAP LeanIX is a leading provider of Enterprise Architecture solutions that drive and manage IT landscape modernization and continuous business transformation. Our software-as-a-service solutions offer
- Enterprise Architect
- Financial Services
- Retail
- 66% Enterprise
- 19% Mid-Market
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
CAST Highlight is a software intelligence product, available as SaaS, that provides rapid insights across a portfolio of applications. It acts as an application ‘control tower’ by automatically unders
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 59% Enterprise
- 26% Small-Business
1,864 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Oracle IT Analytics Cloud Service provides 360-degree insight into the performance, availability, and capacity of applications and infrastructure investments, enabling line-of-business and IT executiv
- 52% Enterprise
- 26% Mid-Market
824,139 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
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Create greater value from your initiatives and enable change faster across the enterprise. Plan, prioritize, and track work aligned to business objectives.
- ServiceNow Developer
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 59% Enterprise
- 27% Mid-Market
50,962 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Make smarter decisions and optimize outcomes by unifying all your strategy, capabilities, operating models and change portfolios in a single platform - Bizzdesign Horizzon. With all the data about
- Oil & Energy
- Financial Services
- 70% Enterprise
- 17% Mid-Market
2,346 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Reimagine Enterprise Architecture. Ardoq's data-driven platform unites your enterprise views, charting a clear path to navigate change, unlock revenue growth, fuel innovation, and accelerate transfor
- Retail
- 44% Enterprise
- 30% Mid-Market
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Integrate Strategy, Planning, Execution, and Delivery with Planview Portfolios. To help bring your strategy to life, fuel innovation, and drive digital transformation, Planview Portfolios orchestra
- Information Technology and Services
- Insurance
- 88% Enterprise
- 23% Mid-Market
3,098 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Orbus Software is a leading provider of cloud solutions for enterprise transformation. Its enterprise transformation platform OrbusInfinity provides a comprehensive view of applications, systems, and
- 88% Enterprise
- 6% Mid-Market
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
ManageEngine Analytics Plus (cloud and on-premises) is an IT analytics application with integrated artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing capabilities that enable y
- 60% Enterprise
- 30% Mid-Market
7,655 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Rated as Leader in the Gartner MQ and #1 in the Gartner Critical Capabilities for enterprise architecture tools, ABACUS users enjoy a fully-featured modeling, roadmapping and data analysis tool. Nativ
- 38% Enterprise
- 31% Mid-Market
737 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
ROI4CIO is a product company that creates B2B services and mobile applications for corporate users of IT products.
- 67% Mid-Market
- 33% Small-Business
1,669 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Generate the Technical Documentation and Complete Diagrams of your AWS and Azure Cloud Environment
- 67% Mid-Market
- 33% Small-Business
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Kabeen inventory and measures your IT from a business and technical perspective to help you make the best decisions
- 67% Small-Business
- 33% Mid-Market
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Accelerate PMO success with centralized Project Portfolio Management with Planview PPM Pro™ software. Planview PPM Pro enables PMO teams to focus resources on the work that delivers the most value t
- 57% Enterprise
- 43% Mid-Market
3,098 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Does your Sparx Enterprise Architect models have rich content that needs to be shared? Are you still relying on documents and emails to invite people to understand EA models? Do you target a wider r
- 67% Enterprise
- 33% Mid-Market
12 Twitter followers
Learn More About Application Portfolio Management Software
What is Application Portfolio Management Software?
Application portfolio management software allows companies to see what kinds of software applications are in their enterprise architecture to reduce redundancy and cost. Companies use a collection of software to optimize their business capabilities such as improving operational efficiency, winning key markets, or streamlining costs. Application portfolio management is the practice of identifying, monitoring, and managing the application lifecycle to achieve business objectives and maximize return on investment (ROI) for the IT budget.
The term application portfolio management, also known as IT portfolio management, is very similar to investment portfolio management. Financial firms actively manage their investment portfolio so they reduce the risk of huge financial losses. Similarly, companies need to actively manage their business application portfolio to avoid software cost overrun and resource wastage. It is important to build and maintain a cost-saving technology portfolio that actively contributes to the business objectives. As software demand continues to increase, application portfolio management software helps companies to remove underutilized software and prioritize mission-critical applications.
What are the Common Features of Application Portfolio Management Software?
The following are some core features within IT portfolio management that can help users manage their software inventory:
Software discovery: Application portfolio management solutions need to automatically discover every software on all devices and the cloud. This includes on-premises software and SaaS applications. Manual entry of software is inefficient and doesn’t reflect real-time data.
Software categorization: While the user can categorize software manually, application portfolio management tools should auto tag software into different categories. This allows businesses to identify redundancy and gaps for each type of software.
Software mapping: There is no better way to understand IT stacks than mapping out all software and connecting to projects and teams. Visualization allows IT managers to see which software is used, who is using the software, and for what purpose.
Software utilization: IT managers need to understand how each software is being used and for how much time it is being used. Underused software might be outdated or not enough training is provided to use the software. Overused software may risk license compliance issues. These issues can’t be managed without utilization data.
Software benchmark: Advanced application portfolio management software collects comparison data and sends surveys to users to rank all software based on user satisfaction, performance, and contribution to the business objectives. This allows IT managers to see which software is important and which one is not.
Financial analysis: Some solutions have software asset management capabilities that account for the total cost of ownership (TCO). This is the sum of all direct and indirect costs incurred by that software and is a critical part of the ROI calculation. Companies can identify the true cost of software by analyzing starting cost (software, hardware, migration, training, implementation, license, customization), operating costs (maintenance, upgrades, depreciation, downtime, support, security), and retirement cost (data export, data archiving, inactive licenses). A successful digital transformation must have risk management to prevent cost overruns.
Opportunity identification: After collecting and analyzing all the data, technology portfolio management software will provide reports with areas where companies can save money, reinvest in existing software, or buy new software that fills the capability gap. The ultimate goal is to align the software stack to the business objectives, not just getting chargeback and cutting the underutilized software.
What are the Benefits of Application Portfolio Management Software?
Increase visibility: Decision makers have immediate access to real-time data on the IT landscape from a single source of truth. Most solutions also have prebuilt reports and diagrams on a central dashboard to show the current status of all the software. This not only speeds up the decision-making process but allows for clear communication.
Reduce risk: IT portfolio management solutions reduce transformational risks by understanding when, where, how, and why to make changes in the software portfolio. Visual mapping and dependency reports allow consistent and transparent changes.
Lower IT costs: A well-established application portfolio management practice will align IT spending to business strategy, maintain required capabilities, and discover new demands. By avoiding investing in redundant systems and software, IT managers free up resources that can be used to acquire new capabilities.
Who Uses Application Portfolio Management Software?
IT managers: The team that uses the application portfolio management solution the most would be the IT team since they manage software inventory. They will know which software to purchase, retire, and reinvest in. Also, they can use the IT portfolio management reports to better communicate software inventory status with other stakeholders.
Purchasing team: Purchasing team use application portfolio management software for software purchase negotiation. For example, by understanding which software is underused, the purchasing team can negotiate for the chargeback or lower price.
Software Related to Application Portfolio Management Software
Related solutions that can be used together with technology portfolio management tools include:
Software asset management (SAM) software: This type of software documents and manages on-premises software licenses used by a business. Companies use SAM software to complement application portfolio management for contract management and license management.
SaaS operations management software: SaaS operations management software manages SaaS products to provide businesses with greater control and visibility over their SaaS portfolios.
Challenges with Application Portfolio Management Software
Software solutions can come with their own set of challenges.
Long-term management: IT portfolio management is not a one-shot application rationalization that focuses on cost and short-term technical problems. Cleaning up the software landscape just once and then forgetting about it will result in the same problems reappearing in the future. Companies need to take a lifecycle approach. Regular monitoring of technical and business use of applications and assessing future options are necessary to align the portfolio to business goals.
Understanding dependencies: Applications should not be judged as standalone but as a landscape. IT managers need to consider dependencies between applications and businesses they support. Dependency analysis will show the complexity, risks, and business value of the application landscape. Replacing or retiring an application in isolation results in unintended consequences that impact other teams and applications.
Determining objective metrics: There is no one strategy or metric that can accurately reflect the value of every application. But on the other end, asking the users how valuable each application is extremely biased. Instead, IT managers need to study use cases that identify the value chains and workflows of the application. This shows how the applications support business and technical functionalities for products and customers. Then the IT team can assess the application with proper metrics that are relevant to these functionalities and may also discover new potential uses.
How to Buy Application Portfolio Management Software
Buying an application portfolio management solution can be complicated based on existing infrastructure and software compatibility. Many times when buying application portfolio management solutions, companies have encountered software cost overrun problems, so the desire to make a quick purchase while there is corporate interest and pressure can be strong. However, enterprise software purchasing requires dedication and time. If the company doesn’t like the software after the purchase, changing to another software is costly and time-consuming.
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Application Portfolio Management Software
Companies should have a good understanding of why they need IT portfolio management solutions. Other than simple reasons such as gaining visibility into the application landscape, there are usually deeper reasons why the company needs this capability.
An application portfolio management solution dedicated to the finance team could be much different than the one dedicated to the purchasing team—and their assumption as to why they need this capability could be wrong too. The finance team may think that an application portfolio management tool would help significantly with their messy budgeting process for new software, but the software can do much more than that, so the value and budget of the application should be higher than before. The best way to see a clear picture of the situation is to work with all the stakeholders for use cases to answer who wants to do what, and why is that important for the business.
With use cases, buyers can formulate desired features requirements and rank them objectively. Buyers should make a ranked list of the application portfolio management features that most directly address the problems they’re trying to solve, then reference that in the RFP. Prioritizing the desired feature set can help narrow down the potential pool of technology portfolio management tools, allowing teams to then apply further considerations for budget, ease of integration with other systems, security requirements, and more. This holistic approach empowers buyers to move forward with a focused checklist, which can be used in conjunction with G2 scores to select the best application portfolio management product for the business.
Compare Application Portfolio Management Software Products
Create a long list
Buyers should start with a large pool of application portfolio management software vendors and inform the desired must-have features and budget, so they can respond if they are a good fit or not at the start. The goal is to have at least 5 to 10 vendors that fit the general criteria.
Create a shortlist
Now is the time to cross reference the results of initial vendor evaluations with G2 reviews from other buyers, the combination of which will help to narrow in on a short three to five product list. From there, buyers can compare pricing and features to determine the best fit.
Conduct demos
Demos are the most important part of the RFP process because the buyer must make sure that their software is compatible with the vendor’s application portfolio management solution. Companies must inform vendors upfront that they need to see the data in their system and understand how that will work. Sometimes, vendors may take the buyer’s data and work quickly in the background and then come back with results for the buyer to explore. This is a mini implementation so not all the issues and capabilities are addressed in this type of demo. So, buyers must be sure to discuss the limitation with key stakeholders. Then the buyer should have the selected data ready to give to the vendor. Giving the vendors raw data is time-consuming and risky so it is not recommended.
During demos, buyers should ask specific questions related to the functionalities they care most about; for example, one might ask to be walked through an application dependency analysis by building an application landscape map to determine the value of the whole landscape.
Selection of Application Portfolio Management Software
Choose a selection team
Regardless of a company’s size, it’s important to involve the most relevant personas when beginning the application portfolio management software selection process. Larger companies may include individual team members to fill roles such as project manager, decision maker, system owner, and IT professionals and developers who will be working with the software most closely. Smaller companies with fewer employees might overlap roles.
Negotiation
It is very likely that the buyer will choose SaaS-based technology portfolio management software. In this case, buyers must determine what kind of relationship the buyer and the vendor might have. SaaS vendors will be installing, configuring, upgrading, and interacting with the buyer in the long term, whereas with on-premises software vendors, it is more likely to be a one-time interaction. The buyer needs to determine the SaaS vendor’s customer service’s domain knowledge level, quality of support, and fitment to the stakeholders. There are also specific functionality and packages that the buyer might not need. These can all be negotiated.
Final decision
After this stage, it is important to perform a trial run if possible with the stakeholder team. If the application portfolio management tool is well liked and well utilized, the buyer can take that as a sign that their selection is the right one. If not, reevaluation of the options may be necessary.
Before the final purchase, the buyer should also know what happens if the contract ends early. Application portfolio management solutions are evolving very fast so players are changing every year with new functionalities. The perfect fit may be the case for today but not for the next three to five years. Since the buyer will bring valuable data to the vendor, the buyer needs to know how the data will be handled if the contract ends early. What process and format will the data be extracted from? What rules do both parties have to follow? What are the costs and penalties? It is best to have clarity on these topics at the early stages of the buying process than when things go unplanned.
