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| Case Study |
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Application Portfolio Rationalization Roadmap for
easing integration during acquisition |
Patni leverages its Enterprise Application Rationalization framework to ease IT
integration during an acquisition.
The Client
The client is a billion dollar
organization headquartered in
the US. It operates in more
than 50 countries globally, with
a leading presence in the
Integrated Enterprise Mobility
Solutions industry.
The Challenge
Having been acquired by a global communications leader, the client
faced the daunting task of preparing to integrate its IT department with
that of the acquiring company.
Some of the key challenges included:
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Reviewing and streamlining application portfolio and IT assets to
prepare for integration process |
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Lack of clear visibility in the application portfolio because of
decentralized and ad-hoc buying, made more complex due to poor
documentation |
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Inability to assess the capability or measure the adequacy and value
of current application support structure |
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Inability to track dependencies of business processes on applications. |
The Solution
To streamline its diverse application portfolio, and align it to suit the business
objectives of the acquiring company, the client decided to seek the expertise of
Patni. A detailed assessment exercise conducted by Patni revealed a serious lack of
defined processes to update and maintain the application inventory. Patni also
identified that key decisions around applications and business processes were taken
without adequate insight into their dependencies.
For identifying the key attributes of each application, Patni conducted detailed oneon-
one sessions with service function leads and application owners. Patni's
consultants identified and documented specific anomalies for applications under
consideration. In addition, interviews with service function leads were designed to
focus on understanding the priorities, limitations and strategic considerations
according to business expectations.
Based on the analysis of the information collected as a result of the interviews, and
assessment of the application portfolio, Patni gave a detailed application portfolio
rationalization roadmap. Patni consultants assessed the customer's Application
Portfolio to arrive at recommendations.
The following activities were performed by Patni:
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Validating and updating report of the existing application inventory |
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Presenting various views of the application portfolio - vendor-wise, application
criticality by functional groups, FTE utilization by application criticality |
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Documenting enterprise reference model describing each business process and
the corresponding supporting applications |
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Documenting interface diagram which described all interfacing applications
and their interfaces |
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Proposed recommendations for Application Portfolio Rationalization for each
functional group |
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Proposed a refined application inventory model |
Additional key recommendations to reduce and optimize the application portfolio
included:
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Reduce dependency on third party applications by bringing down the 70 odd
applications to a more manageable number |
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Consolidate database related to marketing functions |
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Standardize on a single application for global travel and expense reporting |
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Consolidate various third party HR applications in SAP HR Standardize on a
single records and document management system |
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Migrate critical ColdFusion applications to .NET framework for better
integration with SAP Enterprise Portal |
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Extend SAP BW implementation to cover enterprise-wide reporting. |
The Technology
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IT Governance application: Clarity 7.5.3 on Weblogic 8.0 |
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Operating System:
Unix |
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Database: Oracle 10g |
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The Benefits
The following activities were performed by Patni:
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Improved visibility of the organization's application portfolio and a
mechanism to extract various views of the same. This was crucial for the
integration with acquiring company |
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Identified list of opportunities to reduce application portfolio by tagging
applications which were redundant or which could be consolidated |
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Identified areas to scale up/scale down FTE requirements based on
application criticality. |
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