Case Study / A large tertiary institution
LSI was approached by our client to support them in managing their technology application portfolio. They had over 1200 applications across the University with no active technology lifecycle management in place. There was no process around decommissioning older technology applications, and they had no overview of which applications were still technically fit for purpose.
With so many applications, there was also a large amount of duplication across the University in different faculties. This had led to technical debt (cost of maintaining applications) with high costs to maintain all the servers the apps were built on as well as paying for duplicated licensing costs. There were also real risk and security issues from older applications still in use. The client was aware they needed support across the whole application life cycle – from introduction to decommission so that application lifecycle management was something that became part of business as usual.
Developed and implemented reporting frameworks to provide insights into application portfolio, supporting decisions on cost, business value, and technical fitness
Identified consolidation opportunities to streamline processes and enhance user experience through analytics and change management
Established a baseline to distinguish essential applications (approximately 25% of existing applications) from those suitable for consolidation or decommissioning
LSI carried out a review of the current application situation. We helped the client to understand where each application was in the application life cycle. We then gained an understanding of where there was duplication across the University with similar applications performing similar functions. A crucial step was to understand the costs involved for each of the applications. This involved looking at licensing costs but also taking a deeper dive to examine other costs such as the number of support tickets raised. LSI also examined the security risk of the applications in use. These steps allowed us to prioritise the most important applications and identified the ones that could be consolidated or decommissioned.
Our client was a large, complex organisation which meant that a key part of this project was stakeholder management. It was crucial to understand each department’s needs and determine which apps had high and low value and take key individuals within the organisation on the journey with us to keep everyone onboard with the changes.
LSI specifically utilised the Gartner framework which is used for application modernisation at a number of tertiary education providers. That approach was a foundation that allowed us to evaluate the application portfolio and take into account the various business and IT capability roadmaps at the University, navigate the various strategic projects going on and set up a Modernisation Panel to help move the University to a future state with a modern application portfolio where the university could focus on continuous improvement from a healthy starting point.
“I wanted to send you a quick note to thank you for the support you provided via your analysis and recommendations for collections. The great news is we are seeing some amazing success from what has been implemented as a result including:
Thanks again for all your support” – A national manager of performance and recoveries for a large insurer
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