One key element in portfolio rationalization that is often needed, but rarely implemented in an easy to manage manner, is the ability to break out your portfolio into groups so that application owners have a list of the apps that are most relevant to them. Knowing who owns what is important for a few reasons, not the least of which is being able to determine who should make the key decisions around keeping or decommissioning an application.

In most of the organizations that we have worked with, the application inventory is managed by IT but in a lot of cases it’s not overly clear who actually owns the apps from looking at the inventory. This is knowledge that is usually in the heads of various people but that hasn’t been documented yet. Now, as senior managers are beginning to demand more insight into their application portfolios due to compliance and cost reduction efforts, it is becoming more essential to be able to quickly define and report on this information.

Further, the application inventory should be centralized and accessible to the teams who need it. Contrary to popular practice, a closely guarded and rarely maintained spreadsheet is not the best way to keep track of your application portfolio. Well, maybe it’s not that bad where you work, but this does happen. One of the main elements that we had in mind when creating AppRx was the ability to have a dynamic application repository/book of record there to help you manage and report on your apps easily. Managing your inventory information doesn’t need to be a headache.