Re-Envision Enterprise Printing

Don't settle for printer consolidation; seek the elimination of print

Analystperspective

You're likely not in the printing business.
Prepare your organization for the future by reducing print.

Initiatives to reduce printers are often met with end-user resistance. Don't focus on the idea of taking something away from end users. Instead, focus on how print reduction fits into larger goals of business process improvement, and on opportunities to turn the vendor into a partner who drives business process improvement through ongoing innovation and print reduction.

What are your true print use cases? Except in some legitimate use cases, printing often introduces friction and does not lead to efficiencies. Companies investing in digital transformation and document management initiatives must take a hard look at business processes still reliant on hard copies. Assess your current state to identify what the current print volume and costs are and where there are opportunities to consolidate and reduce.

Change your financial model. The managed print services industry allows you to use a pay-as-you-go approach and right-size your print spend to the organization's needs. However, in order to do printing-as-a-service right, you will need to develop a good RFP and RFP evaluation process to make sure your needs are covered by the vendor, while also baking in assurances the vendor will partner with you for continuous print reduction.

Emily Sugerman
Research Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations
Info-Tech Research Group

Darin Stahl
Principal Research Advisor, Infrastructure & Operations
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive summary

Your Challenge

IT directors and business operations managers face several challenges:

• Too many known unknowns: Enterprises may be overspending on printing, but this spend is often unknown and untracked.
• Opportunity costs: By locking into conventional printer leases and outdated document management, you are locking yourself out of the opportunity to improve business processes.

Common Obstacles

Printer reduction initiatives are stymied by:

• End-user resistance: Though sometimes the use of paper remains necessary, end users often cling to paper processes out of concern about change.
• Lack of governance: You lack insight into legitimate print use cases and lack full control over procurement of devices and consumables.
• Overly generic RFP: Print requirements are not tailored to your organization, and your managed print services RFP does not ask enough of the vendor.

Info-Tech's Approach

Follow these steps to excise superfluous, costly printing:

• Identify reduction opportunities via a thorough inventory and requirements-gathering process, and educate others on the financial and non-financial benefits. Enforce reduced printing through policies.
• Change your printing financial model to print-as-a-service by building an RFP and scoring tool for managed print services that makes the vendor a partner in continuous innovation.
• Leverage durable print management software to achieve vendor-agnostic governance and visibility.

Info-Tech Insight

Don't settle for printer consolidation: seek to eliminate print and enlist your managed print services vendor to help you achieve that goal.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations that aim to reduce printing long term

• Finally understand aggregate printing costs: Not surprisingly, printing has become a large hidden expense in IT. Enterprises may be overspending on printing, but this spend is often unknown and untracked. Printer consumables are purchased independently by each department, non-networked desktop printers are everywhere, and everyone seems to be printing in color.
• Walk the walk when it comes to digital transformation: Outdated document management practices that rely on unnecessary printing are not the foundation upon which the organization can improve business processes.
• Get out of the printing business: Hire a managed print provider and manage that vendor well.

"There will be neither a V-shaped nor U-shaped recovery in demand for printing paper . . . We are braced for a long L-shaped decline."
–Toru Nozawa, President, Nippon Paper Industries (qtd. in Nikkei Asia, 2020).

Weight of paper and paperboard generated in the U.S.*

*Comprises nondurable goods (including office paper), containers, and packaging.

**2020 data not available.

Source: EPA, 2020.

Common obstacles

These barriers make this challenge difficult to address for many organizations:

• Cost-saving opportunities are unclear: In most cases, nobody is accountable for controlling printing costs, so there's a lack of incentive to do so.
• End-user attachment to paper-based processes: For end users who have been relying on paper processes, switching to a new way of working can feel like a big ask, particularly if an optimized alternative has not been provided and socialized.
• Legitimate print use cases are undefined: Print does still have a role in some business processes (e.g. for regulatory reasons). However, these business processes have not been analyzed to determine which print use cases are still legitimate. The WFH experience during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that many workflows that previously incorporated printing could be digitized. Indeed, the overall attachment to office paper is declining (see chart).
• Immature RFP and RFP scoring methods: Outsourcing print to a managed service provider necessitates careful attention to RFP building and scoring. If your print requirements are not properly tailored to your organization and your managed print services RFP does not ask enough of the vendor, it will be harder to hold your vendor to account.

How important is paper in your office?

Quocirca, a printer industry market research firm, found that the number of organizations for whom paper is "fairly or very important to their business" has dropped 10 percentage points between 2019 and 2021.

Source: Quocirca, 2021.

Info-Tech's approach

Permanently change your company's print culture

1. Plan your Project

• Create your project charter, investigate end user printer behavior and reduction opportunities, gather requirements and calculate printer costs

• Protect yourself by building the right requirements into your RFP, evaluating candidates and negotiating from a strong position

• Identify printers to consolidate and eliminate, install them, and communicate updated printer policy

The Info-Tech difference:

1. Use Info-Tech's tracking tools to finally track data on printer inventory and usage.
2. Get to an RFP for managed print services faster through Info-Tech's requirement selection activity, and use Info-Tech's scoring tool template to more quickly compare candidates and identify frontrunners and knockouts.
3. Use Info-Tech's guidance on print management software to decouple your need to govern the fleet from any specific vendor.

Info-Tech's methodology for Re-Envision Enterprise Printing

Insight summary

Keep an eye on the long-term goal of eliminating print

Don't settle for printer consolidation: seek to eliminate print and enlist your managed print services vendor to help you achieve that goal.

Persuading leaders is key

Good metrics and visible improvement are important to strengthen executive support for a long-term printer reduction strategy.

Tie printer reduction into business process improvement

Achieve long-lasting reductions in print through document management and improved workflow processes.

Maintain clarity on what types of printer use are and aren't supported by IT

Modifying and enforcing printing policies can help reduce use of printers.

Print management software allows for vendor-agnostic continuity

Print management software should be vendor-agnostic and allow you to manage devices even if you change vendors or print services.

Secure a better financial model from the provider

Simply changing your managed print services pay model to "pay-per-click" can result in large cost savings.

Blueprint deliverables

Key deliverable:

Managed Print Services RFP

This blueprint's key deliverable is a completed RFP for enterprise managed print services, which feeds into a scoring tool that accelerates the requirements selection and vendor evaluation process.

Managed Print Services Vendor Assessment Questions

Managed Print Services RFP Template

Managed Print Services RFP Vendor Proposal Scoring Tool

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Enterprise Printing Project Charter

Document the parameters of the print reduction project, your goals, desired business benefits, metrics.

Enterprise Printing Roles and Responsibilities RACI Guide

Assign key tasks for the project across strategy & planning, vendor selection, implementation, and operation.

Printer Policy

Start with a policy template that emphasizes reduction in print usage and adjust as needed for your organization.

Printer Reduction Tool

Track the printer inventory and calculate total printing costs.

End-User Print Requirements Survey

Base your requirements in end user needs and feedback.

Blueprint benefits

IT benefits

• Make the project charter for printer reduction and estimate cost savings
• Determine your organization's current printing costs, usage, and capabilities
• Define your organization's printing requirements and select a solution
• Develop a printer policy and implement the policy

Business benefits

• Understand the challenges involved in reducing printers
• Understand the potential of this initiative to reduce costs
• Accelerate existing plans for modernization of paper-based business processes by reducing printer usage
• Contribute to organizational environmental sustainability targets

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

Phase 1

Strategy and Planning

Re-Envision Enterprise Printing

• This phase will walk you through the following activities:
• Create a list of enterprise print roles and responsibilities
• Create project charter
• Inventory printer fleet and calculate printing costs
• Examine current printing behavior and identify candidates for device elimination
• Gather requirements, including through end user survey

This phase involves the following participants:

• IT director/CIO
• Business operations manager
• Project manager

Step 1.1

Create project charter and assign roles

Outcomes of this step

Completed Project Charter with RACI chart

Phase 1: Strategy and Planning

• Step 1.1 Create project charter and assign roles
• Step 1.2 Assess current state
• Step 1.3 Gather requirements

This step involves the following participants:

• IT director/CIO
• Business operations manager
• Project manager

Activities in this step

• Create a list of enterprise print roles and responsibilities
• Create project charter

1.1 Create project charter

Use the project charter to clearly define the scope and avoid scope creep

Identify project purpose

• Why is the organization taking on this project? What are you trying to achieve?
• What is the important background you need to document? How old is the fleet? What kinds of printer complaints do you get? What percentage of the IT budget does printing occupy?
• What specific goals should this project achieve? What measurable financial and non-financial benefits do these goals achieve?

Identify project scope

• What functional requirements do you have?
• What outputs are expected?
• What constraints will affect this project?
• What is out of scope for this project?

What are the main roles and responsibilities?

• Who is doing what for this project?

How will you measure success?

• What are the project's success metrics and KPIs?

Enterprise Printing Project Charter

Anticipate stakeholder resistance

Getting management buy-in for printer reduction is often one of the biggest challenges of the project.

Info-Tech Insight

If printer reduction is not driven and enforced from the top down, employees will find ways to work around your policies and changes. Do not attempt to undertake printer reduction initiatives without alerting executives. Ensure visible executive support to achieve higher cost savings.

Align the printer reduction project to org goals to achieve buy-in

A successful IT project demonstrates clear connections to business goals

Which business and organizational goals and drivers are supported by IT's intention to transform its printing ecosystem? For example,

Legislation: In 2009, the Washington House of Representatives passed a bill requiring state agencies to implement a plan to reduce paper consumption by 30% (State of Washington, 2009). The University of Washington cites this directive as one of the drivers for their plans to switch fully to electronic records by 2022 (University of Washington, n.d.).

Health care modernization: Implementing electronic health records; reducing paper charts.

Supply chain risk reduction: In 2021, an Ontario district school board experienced photocopier toner shortages and were forced to request schools to reduce printing and photocopying: "We have recommended to all locations that the use of printing be minimized as much as possible and priority given to the printing of sensitive and confidential documentation" (CBC, 2021).

Identify overall organizational goals in the following places:

• Company mission statements
• Corporate website
• Business strategy documents
• Other IT strategy documents
• Executives

Document financial and non-financial benefits

Financial benefits: Printer reduction can reduce your printing costs and improve printing capabilities.

• Printer reduction creates a controlled print environment; poorly controlled print environments breed unnecessary costs.
• Cost savings can be realized through:
  • Elimination of cost-efficient inkjet desktop printers.
  • Elimination of high-cost, inefficient, or underutilized printers.
  • Sharing of workshop printers between an optimal number of end users.
  • Replacing separate printers, scanners, copiers, and fax machines with. multi-function devices.
• Cost savings can be achieved through a move to managed print services, if you negotiate the contract well and manage the vendor properly. The University of Washington estimated a 20-25% cost reduction under a managed print services model compared to the existing lease (University of Washington, "What is MPS").

Non-financial benefits: Although the main motivation behind printer reduction is usually cost savings, there are also non-financial benefits to the project.

• Printer reduction decreases physical space required for printers
• Printer reduction meets employee and client environmental demands
  • Printer reduction can reduce the electricity and consumables used
  • Reduction in consumables means reduced hazardous waste from consumables and devices
• Printer reduction can result in better printing capabilities
  • Moving to a managed print services model can provide you with better printing capabilities with higher availability

Assign responsibility to track print device costs to IT

Problem:
Managers in many organizations wrongly assume that since IT manages the printer devices, they also already manage costs.

However, end users typically order printer devices and supplies through the supplies/facilities department, bypassing any budget approval process, or through IT, which does not have any authority or incentive to restrict requests (when they're not measured against the controlling of printer costs).

Organization-wide printer usage policies are rarely enforced with any strictness.

Without systematic policy enforcement, end-user print behavior becomes frivolous and generates massive printing costs.

Solution:
Recommend all print device costs be allocated to IT.

• Aggregate responsibility: Recommend that all printer costs be aggregated under IT's budget and tracked by IT staff.
• Assign accountability: Although supplies may continually be procured by the organization's supplies/facilities department, IT should track monthly usage and costs by department.
• Enforce policy: Empower IT with the ability to enforce a strict procurement policy that ensures all devices in the print environment are approved models under IT's control. This eliminates having unknown devices in the printer fleet and allows for economies of scale to be realized from purchasing standardized printing supplies.
• Track metrics: IT should establish metrics to measure and control each department's printer usage and flat departments that exceed their acceptable usage amounts.

Assign accountability for the initiative

Someone needs to have accountability for both the printer reduction tasks and the ongoing operation tasks, or the initiative will quickly lose momentum.

Customize Info-Tech's Enterprise Printing Roles and Responsibilities RACI Guide RACI chart to designate project roles and responsibilities to participants both inside and outside IT.

These tasks fall under the categories of:

• Strategy and planning
• Vendor selection, evaluation, and acquisition
• Implementation
• Operate

Assign a RACI: Remember the meaning of the different roles

• Responsible (does the work on a day-to-day basis)
• Accountable (reviews, signs off on, and is held accountable for outcomes)
• Consulted (input is sought to feed into decision making)
• Informed (is given notification of outcomes)

As a best practice, no more than one person should be responsible or accountable for any given process. The same person can be both responsible and accountable for a given process, or it could be two different people.

Avoid making someone accountable for a process if they do not have full visibility into the process for appropriate oversight, or do not have time to give the process sufficient attention.

The Enterprise Printing Roles and Responsibilities RACI Guide can be used to organize and manage these tasks.

Define metrics to measure success

Track your project success by developing and tracking success metrics

Ensure your metrics relate both to business value and customer satisfaction. "Reduction of print" is a business metric, not an experience metric.

Frame metrics around experience level agreements (XLAs) and experience level objectives (XLOs): What are the outcomes the customer wants to achieve and the benefits they want to achieve? Tie the net promoter score into the reporting from the IT service management system, since SLAs are still needed to tactically manage the achievement of the XLOs.

Use the Metrics Development Workbook from Info-Tech's Develop Meaningful Service Metrics to define:

• Relevant stakeholders
• Their goals and pain points
• The success criteria that must be met to achieve these goals
• The key indicators that must be measured to achieve these goals from an IT perspective
• What the appropriate IT metrics are, based on all of the above

Metrics could include

• User satisfaction
• Print services net promoter model
• Total printing costs
• Printer availability (uptime)
• Printer reliability (mean time between failures)
• Total number of reported incidents
• Mean time for vendor to respond and repair

Info-Tech Insight:

Good metrics and visible improvement are important to strengthen executive support for a long-term printer reduction strategy.

Step 1.2

Assess current state

Outcomes of this step

• Aggregate view of your printer usage and costs

Strategy and Planning

This step involves the following participants:

• IT director/CIO
• Business operations manager
• Project manager

Activities in this step

• 1.2. Inventory your printer fleet: Office walk-around
• 1.2 Inventory your printer fleet: Collect purchase receipts/statements/service records
• 1.3 Calculate printing costs

Create an aggregate view of your printer usage and costs

Problem: Lack of visibility

• Most organizations are unaware of the savings potential in reducing print due to a lack of data.
• Additionally, organizations may have inappropriately sized devices for their workloads.
• Often, nobody is responsible for managing the printers collectively, resulting in a lack of visibility into printing activity. Without this visibility, it is difficult to muster executive commitment and support for printer reduction efforts.
• The first step to eliminating your printers is to inventory all the printers in the organization and look at an aggregate view of the costs. Without understanding the cost saving potential, management will likely continue to avoid printer changes due to the idea's unpopularity with end users.
• Valid use cases for printers will likely still remain, but these use cases should be based on a requirements analysis.

Create visibility through by following these steps:

1. Office walk-around: Most organizations have no idea how many printers they have until they walk around the office and physically count them. This is especially true in cases where management is allowed to purchase personal printers and keep them at their desks. An office walk-around is often necessary to accurately capture all the printers in your inventory.
2. Collect purchase receipts/statements/service records: Double-check your printer inventory by referring to purchase receipts, statements, and service records.
3. Identify other sources of costs: Printer purchases only make up a small fraction of total printing costs. Operating costs typically account for 95% of total printer costs. Make sure to factor in paper, ink/toner, electricity, and maintenance costs.

1.2.1 Inventory your printer fleet: part 1

Office walk-around

1. Methodically walk around the office and determine the following for each printer:
   • Device type
   • Make, model, serial number
   • Location
   • Number of users supported
   • Device owner
   • Type of users supported (department, employee position)
2. Record printer details in Tab 1 of Info-Tech's Printer Reduction Tool. Collaborate with the accounting or purchasing department to determine the following for each printer recorded:
   • Purchase price/date
   • Monthly duty cycle
   • Estimated remaining useful life
   • Page count to date

Download the Printer Reduction Tool

1.2.2 Inventory your printer fleet:
part 2

Collect purchase receipts/statements/service records

1. Ask your purchasing manager for purchase receipts, statements, and service records relating to printing.
2. For documents found, match the printer with your physical inventory. Add any printers found that were not captured in the physical inventory count. Record the following:
   1. Device type
   2. Make, model, serial number
   3. Location
   4. Number of users supported
   5. Device owner
   6. Type of users supported (department, employee position)
3. 3. Collaborate with the accounting or purchasing department to determine the following for each printer recorded:
   1. Purchase price/date
   2. Monthly duty cycle
   3. Estimated remaining useful life
   4. Page count to date
4. Enter the data in Tab 1 of the Printer Reduction Tool

Download the Printer Reduction Tool

1.2.3 Calculate your printing costs

Collect purchase receipts/statements/service records

• Collect invoices, receipts, and service records to sum up the costs of paper, ink or toner, and maintenance for each machine. Estimate electricity costs.
• Record your costs in Tab 2 of the Printer Reduction Tool.
• Review the costs per page and per user to look for particularly expensive printers and understand the main drivers of the cost.
• Review your average monthly cost and annual cost per user. Do these costs surprise you?

Step 1.3

Gather printing requirements

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding of the organization's current printing behavior and habits
• Identification of how industry context and digitization of business processes have impacted current and future requirements

This step involves the following participants:

• IT director
• IT staff
• Rest of organization

Activities in this step

• Examine current printing behavior and habits
• Administer end-user survey
• Identify current requirements
• Identify future requirements

Requirements Gathering Overview

1. Identify opportunities to go paperless
   • Determine where business process automation is occurring
   • Align with environmental and sustainability campaigns
2. Identify current requirements
   • Review the types of document being printed and the corresponding features needed
   • Administer end-user survey to understand user needs and current printer performance
3. Identify future requirements

• Identify future requirements to avoid prematurely refreshing your printer fleet

Stop: Do not click "Print"

The most effective way to achieve durable printing cost reduction is simply to print less.

• Consolidating devices and removing cost-inefficient individual printers is a good first step to yielding savings.
• However, more sustainable success is achieved by working with the printer vendor(s) and the business on continuous innovation via proposals and initiatives that combine hardware, software, and services.
• Sustained print reduction depends on separate but related business process automation and digital innovation initiatives.

Info-Tech Insight:

Achieve long-lasting reductions in print through document management and improved workflow processes.

Leverage Info-Tech research to support your business' digital transformation

Define how changes to enterprise printing fit into digital transformation plans

Identify opportunities to go paperless

The "paperless office" has been discussed since the 1970s. The IT director alone does not have authority to change business processes. Ensure the print reduction effort is tied to other strategies and initiatives around digital transformation. Working on analog pieces of paper is not digital and may be eroding digital transformation process.

Leverage Info-Tech's Assert IT's Relevance During Digital Transformations to remind others that modernization of the enterprise print environment belongs to the discussion around increasing digitized support capabilities.

Eliminate business process friction caused by print

Analyze workflows for where they are still using paper. Ask probing questions about where paper still adds value and where the business process is a candidate for paperless digital transformation

• Is this piece of paper only being used to transfer information from one application to another?
• What kind of digitalization efforts have happened in the business as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic? Which workflows have digitized on their own?
• Where has e-signature been adopted?
• Is this use of paper non-negotiable (e.g. an ER triage that requires a small printer for forms; the need for bank tellers to provide receipts to customers)?
• Do we have compliance obligations that require us to retain a paper process?
• What is getting printed? Who is printing the most? Identify if there are recurring system-generated reports being printed daily/weekly/quarterly that are adding to the volume. Are reports going directly from staff mailboxes to a recycling bin?
• Does our print financial model incentivize the transformation of business processes, or does it reinforce old habits?
• What services, software, and solutions for document management and business process analysis does our managed print services vendor offer? Can we involve the vendor in the business transformation conversation by including an innovation clause in the next contract (re)negotiation to push the vendor to offer proposals for projects that reduce print?

Develop short-term and long-term print reduction strategies

Short-term strategies

• Consolidate the number of printers you have.
• Determine whether to outsource printing to a managed services provider and make the move.
• Enable print roaming and IT verification.
• Require user-queued print jobs to be authenticated at a printer to prevent print jobs that are lost or not picked up.
• Set up user quotas.
• Provide usage records to business managers so they can understand the true cost of printing.
• User quotas may create initial pushback, but they lead users to ask themselves whether a particular print job is necessary.
• Renegotiate print service contracts.
• Revisit contracts and shop around to ensure pricing is competitive.
• Leverage size and centralization by consolidating to a single vendor, and use the printing needs of the entire enterprise to decrease pricing and limit future contractual obligations.
• Train users on self-support.
• Train users to remedy paper jams and move paper in and out of paper trays.

Long-term strategies

• Promote a paperless culture by convincing employees of its benefits (greater cost savings, better security, easier access, centralized repository, greener).
• Educate users to use print area wisely.
• Develop campaigns to promote black and white printing or a paperless culture.

Info-Tech Insight:

One-time consolidation initiatives leave money on the table. The extra savings results from changes in printing culture and end-user behavior.

Examine current printing behavior and habits

It's natural for printer usage and printing costs to vary based on office, department, and type of employee. Certain jobs simply require more printing than others.

However, the printing culture within your organization likely also varies based on

• office
• department
• type of employee

Examine the printing behaviors of your employees based on these factors and determine whether their printing behavior aligns with the nature of their job.

Excessive printing costs attributed to departments or groups of employees that don't require much printing for their jobs could indicate poor printing culture and potentially more employee pushback.

Examine current printing behavior and habits, and identify candidates for elimination

1. Go to Tab 3 of your Printer Reduction Tool ("Usage Dashboard Refresh"). Right-click each table and press "Refresh."
2. Go to Tab 4 of your Printer Reduction Tool ("Usage Dashboard") to understand the following:
   1. Average printer utilization by department
   2. Pages printed per month by department
   3. Cost per user by department
3. Take note of the outliers and expensive departments.
4. Review printer inventory and printer use rates on Tab 5.
5. Decide which printers are candidates for elimination and which require more research.
6. If already working in a managed print services model, review the vendor's recommendations for printer elimination and consolidation.
7. Mark printers that could be eliminated or consolidated.

Administer end-user survey

Understand end-user printing requirements and current printer performance through an end-user survey

1. Customize Info-Tech's End-User Print Requirements Survey to help you understand your users' needs and the current performance of your printer fleet.
2. Send the survey to all printer users in the organization.
3. Collect the surveys and aggregate the requirements of users in each department.
4. Record the survey results in the "Survey Results" tab.

Download the End-User Print Requirements Survey

Info-Tech Insight:

Use an end-user printer satisfaction survey before and after any reduction efforts or vendor implementation, both as a requirement-gathering user input and to measure/manage the vendor.

Identify your current requirements

Collect all the surveys and aggregate user requirements. Input the requirements into your Printer Reduction Tool.

Discussion activity:

• Review the requirements for each department and discuss:
• What is this device being used for (e.g. internal documents, external documents, high-quality graphics/color)?
• Based on its use case, what kinds of features are needed (e.g. color printing, scanning to email, stapling)?
• Is this the right type of device for its purpose? Do we need this device, or can it be eliminated?
• Based on its use case, what kinds of security features are needed (e.g. secure print release)?
• Are there any compliance requirements that need to be satisfied (e.g. PCI, ITAR, HIPAA)?
• Based on its use case, what's the criticality of uptime?
• What is this device's place in the organization's workflow? What are its dependencies?
• With which systems is the device compatible? Is it compatible with the newer operating system versions? If not, determine whether the device is a refresh candidate.

Identify your future requirements

Prepare your printer fleet for future needs to avoid premature printer refreshes.

Discussion activity:

• Review the current requirements for each department's printers and discuss whether the requirements will meet the department's printing needs over the next 10 years.
• What is this device going to be used for in the next 10 years?
• Will use of this device be reduced by plans to increase workflow digitization?
• Based on its use case, what kinds of features are needed?
• Is this the right type of device for its purpose?
• Based on its use case, what kinds of security features are needed?
• Based on its use case, what is the criticality of uptime?
• Is this device's place in the organization's workflow going to change? What are its dependencies?
• Reassess your current requirements and make any changes necessary to accommodate for future requirements.

Examine requirements specific to your industry and workflow

Some common examples of industries with specific printing requirements:

• Healthcare
  • Ability to comply with HIPAA requirements
  • High availability and reliability with on-demand support and quick response times
  • Built-in accounting software for billing purposes
  • Barcode printing for hospital wristbands
  • Fax requirements
• Manufacturing
  • Barcoding technology
  • Ability to meet regulations such as FDA requirements for the pharmaceutical industry
  • Ability to integrate with ERP systems
• Education
  • Password protection for sensitive student information
  • Test grading solutions
  • Paper tests for accessibility needs

Phase 2

Vendor Selection, Evaluation, Acquisition

Re-Envision Enterprise Printing

• This phase will walk you through the following activities:
• Define managed print services RFP requirement questions
• Create managed print services RFP and scoring tool
• Score the RFP responses

This phase involves the following participants:

• IT director/CIO
• Business operations manager
• Project manager

Change your financial model

The managed print services industry allows you to use a pay-as-you-go approach and right-size your print spend to the organization's needs.

Avoid being locked into a long lease where the organization pays a fixed monthly fee whether the printer runs or not.

Instead, treat enterprise printing as a service, like the soda pop machine in the break room, where the vendor is paid when the device is used. If the vending machine is broken, the vendor is not paid until the technician restores it to operability. Printers can work the same way.

By moving to a per click/page financial model, the vendor installs and supports the devices and is paid whenever a user prints. Though the organization pays more on a per-click/page basis compared to a lease, the vendor is incentivized to right-size the printer footprint to the organization, and the organization saves on monthly recurring lease costs and maintenance costs.

Right-size commitments: If the organization remains on a lease instead of pay-per-click model, it should right-size the commitment if printing drops below a certain volume. In the agreement, include a business downturn clause that allows the organization to right-size and protect itself in the event of negative growth.

Understand the managed print services model and its cost savings

Outsourcing print services can monitor and balance your printers and optimize your fleet for efficiency. Managed print services are most appropriate for:

• Organizations engaging in high-volume, high-quality print jobs with growing levels of output.
• Organizations with many customer-facing print jobs.

There are three main managed printing service models. Sometimes, an easy switch from a level pay model to a pay-per-click model can result in substantial savings:

Level Pay

• Flat rate per month based on estimates.
• Attempts to flatten IT's budgeting so printing costs are consistent every month or every year (for budgeting purposes). At the end of the year, the amount of supplies used is added up and compared with the initial estimates and adjusted accordingly.
• The customer pays the same predictable fee each month every year, even if you don't meet the maximum print quantity for the pay. Increased upcharge for quantities exceeding maximum print quantity.

Base Plus Click

• Fixed base payment (lease or rental) + pay-per-sheet for services.
• In addition to the monthly recurring base cost, you pay for what you use. This contract may be executed with or without a minimum monthly page commitment. Page count through remote monitoring technologies is typically required.

Pay Per Click

• Payment is solely based on printing usage.
• Printing costs will likely be the lowest with this option, but also the most variable.
• This option requires a minimum monthly page commitment and/or minimum term.

Info-Tech Insight:

Vendors typically do not like the pay-per-click option and will steer businesses away from it. However, this option holds the vendor accountable for the availability and reliability of your printers, and Info-Tech generally recommends this option.

Compare financials of each managed print services option

Your printing costs with a pay-per-click model are most reflective of your actual printer usage. Level pay tends to be more expensive, where you need to pay for overages but don't benefit from printing less than the maximum allocated.

See the below cost comparison example with level pay set at a maximum of 120,000 impressions per month. In the level pay model, the organization was paying for 120,000 sheets in the month it only used 60,000 impressions, whereas it would have been able to pay just for the 60,000 sheets in the pay-per-click model.

Financial comparison case study

This organization compared estimated costs over a 36-month period for the base-plus-click and pay-per-page models for Toshiba E Studio 3515 AC Digital Color Systems.

Results

Though the per-image cost for each image is lower in the base-plus-click model, the added monthly recurring costs for the lease means the "net pay per click" is higher.

Overall, the pay-per-page estimate saved $10,044 over a 36-month period for this device.

Bake continuing innovation into your requirements

Once you are in the operation phase, you will need to monitor and analyze trends in company printing in order to make recommendations for the future and to identify areas for possible savings and/or asset optimization.

Avoid a scenario where the vendor drops the printer in your environment and returns only for repairs. Engage the vendor in this continuous innovation work:

In the managed services agreement, include a proviso for continuous innovation where the vendor has a contractual obligation to continually look at the business process flow and bring yearly proposals to show innovation (e.g. cost reductions; opportunities to reduce print, which allows the vendor to propose document management services and record keeping services). Leverage vendors who are building up capabilities to transform business processes to help with the heavy lifting.

Establish a vision for the relationship that goes beyond devices and toner. The vendor can make a commitment to continuous management and constant improvement, instead of installing the devices and leaving. Ideally, this produces a mutually beneficial situation: The client asks the vendor to sell them ways to mature and innovate the business processes, while the vendor retains the business and potentially sells new services. In order to retain your business, the vendor must continue to learn and know about your business.

The metric of success for your organization is the simple reduction in printed copies overall. The vendor success metric would be proposals that may combine hardware, software, and services that provide cost-effective reductions in print through document management and workflow processes. The vendors should be keen to build this into the relationship since the services delivery has a higher margin for them.

Sample requirement wording:

"Continuing innovation: The contractor initiates at least one (1) project each year of the contract that shows leadership and innovation in solutions and services for print, document management, and electronic recordkeeping. Bidders must describe a sample project in their response, planning for an annual investment of approximately 50 consulting hours and $10,000 in hardware and/or software."

Reward the vendor for performance instead of "punishing" them for service failures

Problem: Printer downtime and poor service is causing friction with your managed service provider (MSP).

MSPs often offer clients credit requests (service credits) for their service failures, which are applied to the previous month's monthly recurring charge. They are applied to the last month's MRC (monthly reoccurring charges) at the end of term and then the vendor pays out the residual.

However, while common, service credits are not always perceived to be a strong incentive for the provider to continually focus on improvement of mean time to respond or mean time to repair.

Solution: Turn your vendor into a true partner by including an "earn back" condition in the contract.

• Engage the vendor as a true partner within a relationship based upon service credits.
• Suggest that the vendor include a minor change to the non-performance processes within the final agreement: the vendor implements an "earn back" condition in the agreement.
• Where a bank of service credits exists because of non-performance, if the provider exceeds the SLA performance metrics for a number of consecutive months (two is common), then a given number of prior credits received by the client are returned to the provider as a reward for improved performance.
• This can be a useful mechanism to drive improved performance.

Leverage enterprise print management software

Printers are commoditized and can come and go, but print management software enables the governance, compliance, savings and visibility necessary for the transformation

• Printer management solutions range from tools bundled with ink-jet printers that track consumables' status, to software suites that track data for thousands of print devices.
• Typically, these solutions arrive in enterprises as part of larger managed services printing engagements, bundled with hardware, financing, maintenance, and "services."
• Bundling print management software means that customers very rarely seek to acquire printing management software alone.
• Owing to the level of customization (billing, reporting, quotas, accounts, etc.) switching print management software solutions is also rare. The work you put into this software will remain with IT regardless of your hardware.
• Durability of print management software is also influenced by the hardware- and technology-agnostic nature of the solutions (e.g. swapping one vendor's devices for another does not trigger anything more than a configuration change in print management software.)

Include enterprise print management requirements in the RFP

Ask respondents to describe their managed services capabilities and an optional on-premises, financed solution with these high-level capabilities.

Select the appropriate type of print management software

Vendor-provided solutions are adequate control for small organizations with simple print environments

• Suitable for small organizations (<100 users).
• Software included with print devices can pool print jobs, secure access, and centralize job administration.
• Dealing with complex sales channels for third-party vendors is likely a waste of resources.

SMBs with greater print control needs can leverage mid-level solutions to manage behavior

• Suitable for mid-size organizations (<500 users).
• Mid-level software can track costs, generate reports, and centralize management.
• Solutions start at $500 but require additional per-device costs.

Full control solutions will only attract large organizations with a mature print strategy

• Full control solutions tend to be suitable for large organizations (>500 users) with complex print environments and advanced needs.
• Full control software allows for absolute enforcement of printing policies and full control of printing.
• Expect to spend thousands for a tailored solution that will save time and guide cost savings.

Enterprise print management software features

The feature set for these tools is long and comprehensive. The feature list below is not exhaustive, as specific tools may have additional product capabilities.

Get to the managed print services RFP quicker

Jumpstart your requirements process using these tools and exercises

Vendor Assessment Questions

Use Info-Tech's catalog of commonly used questions and requirements in successful acquisition processes for managed print services. Ask the right questions to secure an agreement that meets your needs. If you are already in a contract with managed print services, take the opportunity of contract renewal to improve the contract and service.

RFP Template and "Schedule 1" Attachment

Add your finalized assessment questions into this table, which you will attach to your RFP. The vendor answers questions in this "Schedule 1" attachment and returns it to you.

RFP Scoring Tool

Aggregate the RFP responses into this scoring tool to identify the frontrunners and candidates for elimination. Since the vendors are asked to respond in a standard format, it is easier to bring together all the responses to create a complete view of your options.

Define RFP requirement questions

Include the right requirements for your organization, and avoid leaving out important requirements that might have been overlooked.

1. Download the Managed Print Services Vendor Assessment Questions tool. Use this document as a "shopping list" to jumpstart an initial draft of the RFP and, more importantly, scoring requirements.
2. Review the questions in the context of your near- and long-term printer outsourcing needs. Consider your environment, your requirements, and goals. Include other viewpoints from the RACI chart from Phase 1.
3. Place an 'X' in the first column to retain the question. Edit the wording of the question if required, based on your organizational needs.
4. Use the second column to indicate which section of the RFP to include the question in.

Download the Managed Print Services Vendor Assessment Questions tool

Create RFP scoring tool and RFP

1. Enter the requirements questions into the scoring tool on Tabs 2 and 4.
2. Tab 2: Create scoring column for each vendor. You will paste in their responses here.
3. Edit Tabs 3 and 4 so they align with what you want the vendor to see. Copy and paste Tab 3 and Tab 4 into a new document, which will serve as a "Schedule 1" attachment to the RFP package the vendor receives.
4. Complete the RFP template. Describe your current state and current printer hardware (documented in the earlier current-state assessment). Explain the rules of how to respond and how to fill out the Schedule 1 document. Instruct each vendor to fill in their responses to each question along with any notes, and to reply with a zip file that includes the completed RFP package along with any marketing material needed to support their response.
5. Send a copy of the RFP and Schedule 1 to each vendor under consideration.

Download the Managed Print Services RFP Vendor Proposal Scoring Tool

Download the Managed Print Services RFP template

Score RFP responses

1. When the responses are returned, copy and paste each vendor's results from Schedule 1 into Tab 2 of the main scoring tool.
2. Evaluate each RFP response against the RFP criteria based on the scoring scale.
3. Send the completed scoring tool to the CIO.
4. Set up a meeting to discuss the scores and generate shortlist of vendors.
5. Conduct further interviews with shortlisted vendors for due diligence, pricing, and negotiation discussions.
6. Once a vendor is selected, review the SLAs and contract and develop a transition plan.

Info-Tech Insight:

The responses from the low-scoring vendors still have value: these providers will likely provide ideas that you can then leverage with your frontrunner, even if their overall proposal did not score highly.

Phase 3

Implementation & Operation

Re-Envision Enterprise Printing

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Update your enterprise printer policies
• Readminister end-user survey to measure project success

This phase involves the following participants:

• IT director/CIO
• Business operations manager
• Project manager

Modify your printer policies

Review and modify Info-Tech's Printer Policy Template to support your print reduction goals

Consider that your goal is to achieve printer reduction. Discuss with your team how strict it needs to be to truly reset behavior with printers. Many organizations struggle with policy enforcement. Firm language in the policy may be required to achieve this goal. For example,

• IT only supports the printers acquired through the managed print service. Personal desktop printers are not supported by IT. Expense statements will not be accepted for non-supported printers.
• Create a procurement policy where all device requests need justification and approval by department managers and IT. Have a debate over what the extreme exceptions would be. Legitimate exceptions must go through a review and approval process.
• Restrict color printing to external or customer-facing use cases.
• Encourage digital or electronic solutions in lieu of hard copies (e.g. e-signatures and approval workflows; scanning; use of integrated enterprise applications like SharePoint).

Download the Printer Policy template

Readminister the end-user survey

You have already run this survey during the requirements-gathering phase. Run it again to measure success.

The survey was run once prior to the changes being implemented to establish a baseline of user satisfaction and to gain insights into additional requirements.

Several months after the initial rollout (90 days is typical to let the dust settle), resurvey the end users and publish or report to the administration success metrics (the current costs vs. the actual costs prior to the change).

User satisfaction survey can be used to manage the vendor, especially if the users are less happy after the vendor touched their environment. Use this feedback to hold the provider to account for improvement.

Measure project success

Revisit the pre-project metrics and goals and compare with your current metrics

• Identify printers to consolidate or eliminate.
• Update asset management system (enter software and hardware serial numbers or identification tags into configuration management system).
• Reallocate/install printers across the organization.
• Develop ongoing printer usage and cost reports for each department.
• Review the end-user survey and compare against baseline.
• Operate, validate, and distribute usage metrics/chargeback to stakeholders.
• Audit and report on environmental performance and sustainability performance to internal and external bodies, as required.
• Write and manage knowledgebase articles.
• Monitor and analyze trends in company printing in order to make recommendations for the future and to identify areas for possible savings and/or asset optimization.

Metrics could include

• User satisfaction
• Print services net promoter model
• Total printing costs
• Printer availability (uptime)
• Printer reliability (mean time between failures)
• Total number of reported incidents
• Mean time for vendor to respond and repair

Support training and adoption

Train users on self-support

Prepare troubleshooting guides and step-by-step visual aid posters for the print areas that guide users to print, release, and find their print jobs and fix common incidents on their own. These may include:

• The name of this printer location and the names of the others on that floor.
• How to enter a PIN to release a print job.
• How to fix a paper jam.
• How to empty the paper tray.
• How to log a service ticket if all other steps are exhausted.

Educate users to use print area wisely

• Inform users what to do if other print jobs appear to be left behind in the printer area.
• Display guidelines on printer location alternatives in case of a long line.
• Display suggestions on maximum recommended time to spend on a job in the event other users are waiting.

Develop campaign to promote paperless culture

Ensure business leadership and end users remain committed to thinking before they print.

• Help your users avoid backsliding by soliciting feedback on the new printer areas.
• Ensure timely escalation of service tickets to the vendor.
• Support efforts by the business to seek out business process modernization opportunities whenever possible.

Plan persuasive communication strategies

Identify cost-saving opportunities and minimize complaints through persuasive communication

Implement a continual improvement plan to achieve long-term enterprise print goals

Implement a continual improvement plan for enterprise printing:

• Develop a vendor management plan:
  • In order to govern SLAs and manage the vendor, ensure that you can track printer-related tickets even if the device is now supported by managed print services.
  • Ensure that printer service tickets sent from the device to the vendor are also reconciled in your ITSM tool. Require the MSP to e-bond the ticket created within their own device and ticketing system back to you so you can track it in your own ITSM tool.
  • Every two months, validate service credits that can be returned to the vendor for exceeding SLA performance metrics.
  • Monitor the impact of their digital transformation strategies. Develop a cadence to review the vendor's suggestions for innovation opportunities.
• Operate, validate, and distribute usage and experience metrics/chargeback to stakeholders.
• Monitor and analyze trends in company printing.

Summary of Accomplishment

Problem Solved

You have now re-envisioned your enterprise print environment by documenting your current printer inventory and current cost and usage. You also have hard inventory and usage data benchmarks that you can use to measure the success of future initiatives around digitalization, going paperless, and reducing print cost.

You have also developed a plan to go to market and become a consumer of managed print services, rather than a provider yourself. You have established a reusable RFP and requirements framework to engage a managed print services vendor who will work with you to support your continuous improvement plans.

Return to the deliverables and advice in this blueprint to reinforce the organization's message to end users on when, where, and how to print. Ideally, this project has helped you go beyond a printer refresh – but rather served as a means to change the printing culture at your organization.

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

Contact your account representative for more information

workshops@infotech.com
1-888-670-8889

Bibliography

Fernandes, Louella. "Quocirca Managed Services Print Market, 2021." Quocirca, 25 Mar. 2021. Accessed 12 Oct. 2021.

McInnes, Angela. "No More Photocopies, No More Ink: Thames Valley Schools Run Out of Toner." CBC, 21 Oct. 2021. Web.

"Paper and Paperboard: Material-Specific Data." EPA, 15 Dec. 2020. Accessed 15 Oct. 2021.

State of Washington, House of Representatives. "State Agencies – Paper Conservation and Recycling." 61st Legislature, Substitute House Bill 2287, Passed 20 April 2009.

Sugihara, Azusa. "Pandemic Shreds Office Paper Demand as Global Telework Unfolds." Nikkei Asia, 18 July 2020. Accessed 29 Sept. 2021.

"Paper Reduction." University of Washington, n.d. Accessed 28 Oct. 2021.

"What is MPS?" University of Washington, n.d. Accessed 16 Mar. 2022.

Research contributors

Jarrod Brumm
Senior Digital Transformation Consultant

Jacques Lirette
President, Ditech Testing

3 anonymous contributors

Info-Tech Research Group Experts

Allison Kinnaird, Research Director & Research Lead
Frank Trovato, Research Director

Application Portfolio Management Foundations

Ensure your application portfolio delivers the best possible return on investment.

Analyst Perspective

You can’t outsource accountability.

Many lack visibility into their overall application portfolio, focusing instead on individual projects or application development. Inevitably, application sprawl creates process and data disparities, redundant applications, and duplication of resources and stands as a significant barrier to business agility and responsiveness. The shift from strategic investment to application maintenance creates an unnecessary constraint on innovation and value delivery.

With the rise and convenience of SAAS solutions, IT has an increasing need to discover and support all applications in the organization. Unmanaged and unsanctioned applications can lead to increased reputational risk. What you don’t know WILL hurt you.

You can outsource development, you can even outsource maintenance, but you cannot outsource accountability for the portfolio. Organizations need a holistic dashboard of application performance and dispositions to help guide and inform planning and investment discussions. Application portfolio management (APM) can’t tell you why something is broken or how to fix it, but it is an important tool to determine if an application’s value and performance are up to your standards and can help meet your future goals.

Hans Eckman
Principal Research Director
Info-Tech Research Group

Is this research right for you?

Research Navigation

Managing your application portfolio is essential regardless of its size or whether your software is purchased or developed in house. Each organization must have some degree of application portfolio management to ensure that applications deliver value efficiently and that their risk or gradual decline in technical health is appropriately limited.

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight: You can’t outsource strategy.

Modern software options have decreased the need for organizations to have robust in-house application management capabilities. Your applications’ future and governance of the portfolio still require a centralized IT oversight to ensure the best return on investment.

The top IT challenges for SE come from app management

A hidden and inefficient application portfolio is the root cause of so many pains experienced by both IT and the business.

• Demand/Capacity Imbalance
• Overspending
• Security and Business Continuity Risk
• Delays in Delivery
• Barriers to Growth

APM comes at a justified cost

The benefits of APM

APM identifies areas where you can reduce core spending and reinvest in innovation initiatives.

Other benefits can include:

• Fewer redundancies
• Less risk
• Less complexity
• Improved processes
• Flexibility
• Scalability

APM allows you to better understand and set the direction of your portfolio

Application Inventory

The artifact that documents and informs the business of your application portfolio.

Application Rationalization

The process of collecting information and assessing your applications to determine recommended dispositions.

Application Alignment

The process of revealing application information through interviewing stakeholders and aligning to business capabilities.

Application Roadmap

The artifact that showcases the strategic directions for your applications over a given timeline.

Application Portfolio Management (APM):

The ongoing practice of:

• Providing visibility into applications across the organization.
• Recommending corrections or enhancements to decision makers.
• Aligning delivery teams on priority.
• Showcasing the direction of applications to stakeholders.

Create a balanced approach to value delivery

Enterprise Agility and Value Realization

Product Lifecycle Management

Align your product and service improvement and execution to enterprise strategy and value realization in three key areas: defining your products and services, aligning product/service owners, and developing your product vision.

• Make the Case for Product Delivery
• Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision
• Build a Better Product Owner

Product Delivery Lifecycle (Agile DevOps)

Enhance business agility by leveraging an Agile mindset and continuously improving your delivery throughput, quality, value realization, and adaptive governance.

• Agile/DevOps Research Center
• Implement Agile Practices That Work
• Spread Best Practices With an Agile Center of Excellence
• Implement DevOps Practices That Work
• Perform an Agile Skills Assessment
• Define the Role of Project Management in Agile and Product-Centric Delivery

Application Portfolio Management

Transform your application portfolio into a cohesive service catalog aligned to your business capabilities by discovering, rationalizing, and modernizing your applications while improving application maintenance, management, and reuse.

Every organization experiences some degree of application sprawl

Causes of Sprawl

• Poor Lifecycle Management
• Turnover & Lack of Knowledge Transfer
• Siloed Business Units & Decentralized IT
• Business-Managed IT
• (Shadow IT)
• Mergers & Acquisitions

Problems With Sprawl

• Redundancy and Inefficient Spending
• Disparate Apps & Data
• Obsolescence
• Difficulties in Prioritizing Support
• Barriers to Change & Growth

Application Sprawl:

Inefficiencies within your application portfolio are created by the gradual and non-strategic accumulation of applications.

You have more apps than you need.

Only 34% of software is rated as both IMPORTANT and EFFECTIVE by users.

Source: Info-Tech’s CIO Business Vision

Build your APM journey map

Application rationalization provides insight

Directionless portfolio of applications	Info-Tech’s Five Lens Model					Assigned dispositions for individual apps
	Application Alignment	Business Value	Technical Health	End-User Perspective	Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)	Maintain: Keep the application but adjust its support structure. Modernize: Create a new initiative to address an inadequacy. Consolidate: Create a new initiative to reduce duplicate functionality. Retire: Phase out the application. Disposition: The intended strategic direction or implied course of action for an application.
	How well do your apps support your core functions and teams?	How well are your apps aligned to value delivery?	Do your apps meet all IT quality standards and policies?	How well do your apps meet your end users’ needs?	What is the relative cost of ownership and operation of your apps?
Application rationalization requires the collection of several data points that represent these perspectives and act as the criteria for determining a disposition for each of your applications.

APM is an iterative and evergreen process

APM provides oversight and awareness of your application portfolio’s performance and support for your business operations and value delivery to all users and customers.

Repeat according to APM cadence and application changes

Executive Brief Case Study

INDUSTRY: Retail

SOURCE: Deloitte, 2017

Info-Tech’s application portfolio management methodology

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals.

Application Portfolio Management Foundations Playbook	Application Portfolio Management Snapshot and Foundations Tool
This template allows you to capture your APM roles and responsibilities and build a repeatable process.	This tool stores all relevant application information and allows you to assess your capability support, execute rationalization, and build a portfolio roadmap.

Key deliverable:

Blueprint Storyboard

This is the PowerPoint document you are viewing now. Follow this guide to understand APM, learn how to use the tools, and build a repeatable APM process that will be captured in your playbook.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI for on this topic look like?

Note: The Guided Implementation will focus on a subset or group of applications depending on the state of your current APM inventory and available time. The goal is to use this first group to build your APM process and models to support your ongoing discovery, rationalization, and modernization efforts.

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our right-sized best practices in your organization. A typical GI, using our materials, is 3 to 6 calls over the course of 1 to 3 months.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Note: The workshop will focus on a subset or group of applications depending on the state of your current APM inventory and available time. The goal is to use this first group to build your APM process and models to support your ongoing discovery, rationalization, and modernization efforts.

Workshop Options

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Blueprint Pre-Step: Get the right stakeholders to the right exercises

APM Lead/Owner (Recommended) ☐ Applications Lead or the individual responsible for application portfolio management, along with any applications team members, if available Key Corporate Stakeholders Depending on size and structure, participants could include: ☐ Head of IT (CIO, CTO, IT Director, or IT Manager) ☐ Head of shared services (CFO, COO, VP HR, etc.) ☐ Compliance Officer, Steering Committee ☐ Company owner or CEO Application Subject Matter Experts Individuals who have familiarity with a specific subset of applications ☐ Business owners (product owners, Head of Business Function, power users) ☐ Support owners (Operations Manager, IT Technician) Delivery Leads ☐ Development Managers ☐ Solution Architects ☐ Project Managers

Understand your APM tools and outcomes

1.Diagnostic	5. Foundations: Chart
2. Data Journey	6. App Comparison
3. Snapshot	7. Roadmap
4. Foundations: Results

Examples and explanations of these tools are located on the following slides and within the phases where they occur.

Assess your current application portfolio with Info-Tech’s APM Diagnostic Tool

One of the primary purposes of application portfolio management is to get what we know and need to know on paper so we can share a common vision and understanding of our portfolio. This enables better discussions and decisions with your application owners and stakeholders.

APM worksheet data journey map

Interpreting your APM Snapshot results

Interpreting your APM Foundations results

Interpreting your APM Foundations chart

Compare application groups

Group comparison can be used for more than just redundant/overlapping applications.

Apply Info-Tech’s 6 R’s Rationalization Disposition Model

Disposition Description Reward Prioritize new features or enhancement requests and openly welcome the expansion of these applications as new requests are presented. Refresh Address the poor end-user satisfaction with a prioritized project. Consult with users to determine if UX issues require improvement to address satisfaction. Refocus Determine the root cause of the low value. Refocus, retrain, or refresh the UX to improve value. If there is no value found, aim to "keep the lights on" until the app can be decommissioned. Replace Replace or rebuild the application as technical and user issues are putting important business capabilities at risk. Decommission application alongside replacement. Remediate Address the poor technical health or risk with a prioritized project. Further consult with development and technical teams to determine if migration or refactoring is suited to address the technical issue. Retire Cancel any requested features and enhancements. Schedule the proper decommission and transfer end users to a new or alternative system if necessary.

TCO, compared relatively to business value, helps determine the practicality of a disposition and the urgency of any call to action. Application alignment is factored in when assessing redundancies and has a separate set of dispositions.

Populate roadmap example

ARE YOU READY TO GET STARTED?

Phase 1

Lay Your Foundations

This phase involves the following participants:

Applications Lead

Key Corporate Stakeholders

Additional Resources

• Build a Value Measurement Framework

APM supports many goals

Building an APM process requires a proper understanding of the underlying business goals and objectives of your organization’s strategy. Effectively identifying these drivers is paramount to gaining buy-in and the approval for any changes you plan to make to your application portfolio.

After identifying these goals, you will need to ensure they are built into the foundations of your APM process.

“What is most critical?” but also “What must come first?”

Assess your current application portfolio with Info-Tech’s APM Diagnostic Tool

One of the primary purposes of application portfolio management is to get what we know and need to know on paper so we can share a common vision and understanding of our portfolio. This enables better discussions and decisions with your application owners and stakeholders.

1.1 Assess your current application portfolio with Info-Tech’s diagnostic tool

Estimated time: 1 hour

1. This tool provides visibility into your application portfolio and APM practices.
2. Based on your assessment, you should gain a better understanding of whether the appropriate next steps are in application discovery, rationalization, or roadmapping.
3. Complete the “Data Entry” worksheet in the Application Portfolio Management Diagnostic Tool (Excel).
4. Review the “Results” worksheet to help inform and guide your next steps.

Download the Application Portfolio Management Diagnostic Tool

1.1 Understanding the diagnostic results

Managed Apps are your known knowns and most of your portfolio. Unmanaged and Unsanctioned Apps are known but have unknown risks and compliance. Bring these under IT support. Unknown Apps are high risk and noncompliant. Prioritize these based on risk, cost, and use.		APM is more than an inventory and assessment. A strong APM program provides ongoing visibility and insights to drive application improvement and value delivery. Use your Sprawl Factors to identify process and organizational gaps that may need to be addressed.
Your APM inventory is only as good as the information in it. Use this chart to identify gaps and develop a path to define missing information.		APM is an iterative process. Use this state assessment to determine where to focus most of your current effort.

Understand potential motivations for APM

The value of APM is defined by how the information will be used to drive better decisions.

Different motivations will influence the appropriate approach to and urgency of APM or, specifically, rationalizing the portfolio. When rationalizing is directly related to enabling or in response to a broader initiative, you will need to create a more structured approach with a formal budget and resources.

1.2 Determine narrative

Estimated time: 30 minutes-2 hours

1. Open the “Narrative” tab in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool.
2. Start by listing your prevailing IT pain points with the application portfolio. These will be the issues experienced predominantly by the IT team and not necessarily by the stakeholders. Be sure to distinguish pain points from their root causes.
3. Determine an equivalent business pain point for each IT pain point. This should be how the problem manifests itself to business stakeholders and should include potential risks to the organization is exposed to.
4. Determine the business goal for each business pain point. Ideally, these are established organizational goals that key decision-makers will recognize. These goals should address the business pain points you have documented.
5. Determine the technical objective for each business goal. These speak to the general corrections or enhancements to the portfolio required to accomplish the business goals.
6. Use the “Narrative - Matrix” worksheet to group items into themes if needed.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

Connect your pains to what the business cares about to find the most effective narrative

1.3 Define goals and metrics

Estimated time: 1 hour

1. Determine the motivations behind APM. You may want to collect and review any of the organization’s strategic documents that provide additional context on previously established goals.
2. With the appropriate stakeholders, discuss the goals of APM. Try to label your goals as either:
   1. Short term: Refers to immediate goals used to represent the progress of APM activities. Likely these goals are more IT-oriented
   2. Long term: Refers to broader and more distant goals more related to the impact of APM. These goals tend to be more business-oriented.
3. To help clearly define your goals, discuss appropriate metrics for each goal. Often these metrics can be expressed as:
   1. Leading indicators: Metrics used to gauge the success of your short-term goals and the progress of APM activities.
   2. Lagging indicators: Metrics used to gauge the success of your long-term goals.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

1.3 Define goals and metrics: Example

“Application” doesn’t have the same meaning to everyone

	Code: A body of code that's seen by developers as a single unit.
	Functionality: A group of functionality that business customers see as a single unit.
	Funding: An initiative that those with the money see as a single budget.
	?: What else?

“Essentially applications are social constructions.”

Source: Martin Fowler

APM focuses on business applications.

“Software used by business users to perform a business function.”

– ServiceNow, 2020

Unfortunately, that definition is still quite vague.

You must set boundaries and scope for “application”

Set boundaries on what is an application or the individual unit that you’re making business decisions on. Also, determine which categories of applications are in scope and how they will be included in the activities and artifacts of APM. Use your product families defined in Deliver Digital Products at Scale to help define your application categories, groups, and boundaries.

1.4 Define application categories

Estimated time: 1 hour

1. Review the items listed on the previous slide and consider what categories provide the best initial grouping to help organize your rationalization and dispositions. Update the category list to match your application groupings.
2. Identify the additional categories you need to manage in your application portfolio.
3. For each category, establish or modify a description or definition and provide examples that exist in your current portfolio.
4. For each category, answer:
   1. Will these be documented in the application inventory?
   2. Will these be included in application rationalization? Think about if this item will be assigned a TCO, value score, and, ultimately, a disposition.
   3. Will these be listed in the application portfolio roadmap?
5. If you completed Deliver Digital Products at Scale, use your product families to help define your application categories.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

1.4 APM worksheet data journey map

1.4 Define application categories: Example

The roles in APM rarely exist; you need to adapt

Corner-of-the-Desk Approach

• No one is explicitly dedicated to building a strategy or APM practices.
• Information is collected whenever the applications team has time available.
• Benefits are pushed out and the value is lost.

Dedicated Approach

• The initiative is given a budget and formal agenda.
• Roles and responsibilities are assigned to team members.

The high-level steps of APM present some questions you need to answer

Build Inventory

Create the full list of applications and capture all necessary attributes.

• Who will build the inventory?
• Do you know all your applications (Shadow IT)?
• Do you know your applications’ functionality?
• Do you know where your applications overlap?
• Who do you need to consult with to fill in the gaps?
• Who will provide specific application information?

Collect & Compile

Engage with appropriate SMEs and collect necessary data points for rationalization.

• Who will collect and compile the data points for rationalization?
• What are the specific data points?
• Are some of the data points currently documented?
• Who will provide specific data points on technical health, cost, performance, and business value?
• Who will determine what business value is?

Assess & Recommend

Apply rationalization framework and toolset to determine dispositions.

• Who will apply a rationalization tool or decision-making framework to generate dispositions for the applications?
• Who will modify the tool or framework to ensure results align to the goals of the organization?
• Who will define any actions or projects that result from the rationalization? And who needs to be consulted to assess the feasibility of any potential project?

Validate & Roadmap

Present dispositions for validation and communicate any decisions or direction for applications.

• Who will present the recommended disposition, corrective action, or new project to the appropriate decision maker?
• Who is the appropriate decision maker for application changes or project approval?
• What format is recommended (idea, proposal, business case) and what extra analysis is required?
• Who needs to be consulted regarding the potential changes?

1.5 Determine APM steps and roles (SIPOC)

Estimated time: 1-2 hours

1. Begin by comparing Info-Tech’s list of common APM roles to the roles that exist in your organization with respect to application management and ownership.
2. There are four high-level steps for APM: build inventory, collect & compile, assess & recommend, and validate & roadmap. Apply the SIPOC (Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer) model by completing the following for each step:
   1. In the Process column, modify the description, if necessary. Identify who is responsible for performing the step.
   2. In the Inputs column, modify the list of inputs.
   3. In the Suppliers column, identify who must be included to provide the inputs.
   4. In the Outputs column, modify the list of outputs.
   5. In the Customers column, identify who consumes the outputs.
3. (Optional) Outline how the results of APM will be consumed. For example, project intake or execution, data or platform migration, application or product management, or whichever is appropriate.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

1.5 Determine steps and roles

Planning your APM modernization journey steps

Phase 2

Improve Your Inventory

This phase involves the following participants:

• Applications Lead
• Applications Team

Additional Resources

Document Your Business Architecture

Industry Reference Architectures

Application Capability Template

Pre-step: Collect your applications

1. Consult with your IT team and leverage any existing documentation to gather an initial list of your applications.
2. Build an initial working list of applications. This is just meant to be a starting point. Aim to include any new applications in procurement, implementation, or development.
3. The rationalization and roadmapping phases are best completed when iteratively focusing on manageable groups of applications. Group your applications into subsets based on shared subject matter experts. Likely this will mean grouping applications by business units.
4. Select a subset to be the first group of applications that will undergo the activities of rationalization and roadmapping to refine your APM processes, scoring, and disposition selection.

Info-Tech Best Practice

The more information you plan to capture, the larger the time and effort, especially as you move along toward advanced and strategic items. Capture the information most aligned to your objectives to make the most of your investment.

If you completed Deliver Digital Products at Scale, use your product families and products to help define your applications.

Learn more about automated application discovery:
High Application Satisfaction Starts With Discovering Your Application Inventory

Discover your applications

2.1 Populate your inventory

Estimated time: 1-4 hours per group

1. Review Info-Tech’s list of application inventory attributes.
2. Open the “Application Inventory Details” tab of the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool. Modify, add, or omit attributes.
3. For each application, populate your prioritized data fields or any fields you know at the time of discovery. You will complete all the fields in future iterations.
4. Complete this the best you can based on your team’s familiarity and any readily available documentation related to these applications.
5. Use the drop-down list to select Enabling, Redundant/Overlapping, and Dependent apps. This will be used to help determine dispositions and comparisons.
6. Highlight missing information or placeholder values that need to be verified.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

2.1 APM worksheet data journey map

Why is the business capability so important?

For the purposes of an inventory, business capabilities help all stakeholders gain a sense of the functionality the application provides.

However, the true value of business capability comes with rationalization.

Upon linking all the organization’s applications to a standardized and consistent set of business capabilities, you can then group your applications based on similar, complementary, or overlapping functionality. In other words, find your redundancies and consolidation opportunities.

Important Consideration

Defining business capabilities and determining the full extent of redundancy is a challenging undertaking and often is a larger effort than APM all together.

Business capabilities should be defined according to the unique functions and language of your organization, at varying levels of granularity, and ideally including target-state capabilities that identify gaps in the future strategy.

This blueprint provides a simplified and generic list for the purpose of categorizing similar functionality. We strongly encourage exploring Document Your Business Architecture to help in the business capability defining process, especially when visibility into your portfolio and knowledge of redundancies is poor.

For a more detailed capability mapping, use the Application Portfolio Snapshot and the worksheets in your current workbook.

What is a business capability map?

A business capability map (BCM) is an abstraction of business operations that helps describe what the enterprise does to achieve its vision, mission, and goals. Business capabilities are the building blocks of the enterprise. They are typically defined at varying levels of granularity and include target-state capabilities that identify gaps in the future strategy. These are the people, process, and tool units that deliver value to your teams and customers.

Info-Tech’s Industry Coverage and Reference Architectures give you a head start on producing a BCM fit for your organization. The visual to the left is an example of a reference architecture for the retail industry.

These are the foundational piece for our Application Portfolio Snapshot. By linking capabilities to your supporting applications, you can better visualize how the portfolio supports the organization at a single glance. More specifically, you can highlight how issues with the portfolio are impacting capability delivery.

Reminder: Best practices imply that business capabilities are methodologically defined by business stakeholders and business architects to capture the unique functions and language of your organization.

The approach laid out in this service is about applying minimal time and effort to make the case for proper investment into the best practices, which can include creating a tailored BCM. Start with a good enough example to produce a useful visual and generate a positive conversation toward resourcing and analyses.

We strongly encourage exploring Document Your Business Architecture and the Application Portfolio Snapshot to understand the thorough methods and tactics for BCM.

Why perform a high-level application alignment before rationalization?

Having to address redundancy complicates the application rationalization process. There is no doubt that assessing applications in isolation is much easier and allows you to arrive at dispositions for your applications in a timelier manner.

Rationalization has two basic steps: first, collect and compile information, and second, analyze that information and determine a disposition for each application. When you don’t have redundancy, you can analyze an application and determine a disposition in isolation. When you do have redundancies, you need to collect information for multiple applications, likely across departments or lines of business, then perform a comparative analysis.

Most likely your approach will fall somewhere between the examples below and require a hybrid approach.

Benefits of a high-level application alignment:

• Review the degree of redundancy across your portfolio.
• Understand the priority areas for rationalization and the sequence of information collection.

2.2 Align apps to capabilities and functions

Estimated time: 1-4 hours per grouping

The APM tool provides up to three different grouping comparisons to assess how well your applications are supporting your enterprise. Although business capabilities are important, identify your organizational perspectives to determine how well your portfolio supports these functions, departments, or value streams. Each grouping should be a consistent category, type, or arrangement of applications.

1. Enter the business capabilities, from either your own BCM or the Info-Tech reference architectures, into the Business Capability column under Grouping 1.
2. Open the “Group 1 Alignment Matrix” worksheet in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool.
3. For each application’s row, enter an “X” in the column of a capability that the application supports.
4. Optionally, repeat these steps under Grouping 2 and 3 for each value stream, department, function, or business unit where you’d like to assess application support. Note: To use Grouping 3, unhide the columns on the “Application and Group Lists” worksheet and unhide the worksheet “Grouping 3 Alignment Matrix.”

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

2.2 APM worksheet data journey map

2.2 Aligning applications to groups example

Alignment Matrix: Identify applications supporting each capability or function.

In this example:

BC 1 is supported by App A

BC 2 is supported by App B

BC 3 is supported by Apps C & D

BCs 4 & 5 are supported by App E

BC 6 is supported by Apps F-G. BC 6 shows an example of potential redundancy and portfolio complexity.

The APM tool supports three different Snapshot groupings. Repeat this exercise for each grouping.

Align application to capabilities – tool view

Phase 3

Rationalize Your Applications

This phase involves the following participants:

• Applications Lead
• Application SMEs

Additional Resources

• Build a Value Measurement Framework
• Value Calculator
• Application Portfolio Assessment Diagnostic
• Application TCO Calculator
• Application Rationalization Tool

Phase pre-step: Sequence rationalization assessments appropriately

Use the APM Snapshot results to determine APM iterations

• Application rationalization requires an iterative approach.
• Review your application types and alignment from Phase 2 to begin to identify areas of overlapping or redundant applications.
• Sequence the activities of Phase 3 based on whether you have a:
  • Redundant Portfolio
    • Use the APM Snapshot to prioritize analysis by grouping.
    • Complete the application functional analysis.
    • Use the “Application Comparison” worksheet to aid your comparison of application subsets.
    • Update application dispositions and roadmap initiatives.
  • Non-Redundant Portfolio
    • Use the APM Snapshot to prioritize analysis by grouping.
    • Update application dispositions and roadmap initiatives.

Phase pre-step: Are the right stakeholders present?

Make sure you have the right people at the table from the beginning.

• Application rationalization requires specific stakeholders to provide specific data points.
• Ensure your application subsets are grouped by shared subject matter experts. Ideally, these are grouped by business units.
• For each subset, identify the appropriate SMEs for the five areas of rationalization criteria.
• Communicate and schedule interviews with groups of stakeholders. Inform them of additional information sources to have readily available.
• (Optional) This phase’s activities follow the clockwise sequence of the diagram to the right. Reorder the sequence of activities based on overlaps of availability in subject matter expertise.

Rationalize your applications

One of the principal goals of application rationalization is determining dispositions

Disposition: The intended strategic direction or course of action for an application.

Directionless portfolio of applications	Assigned dispositions for individual apps High-level examples:
	Maintain: Keep the application but adjust its support structure. Modernize: Create a new project to address an inadequacy. Consolidate: Create a new project to reduce duplicate functionality. Retire: Phase out the application.

Application rationalization provides insight

Directionless portfolio of applications	Info-Tech’s Five Lens Model					Assigned dispositions for individual apps
	Application Alignment	Business Value	Technical Health	End-User Perspective	Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)	Maintain: Keep the application but adjust its support structure. Modernize: Create a new initiative to address an inadequacy. Consolidate: Create a new initiative to reduce duplicate functionality. Retire: Phase out the application. Disposition: The intended strategic direction or implied course of action for an application.
	How well do your apps support your core functions and teams?	How well are your apps aligned to value delivery?	Do your apps meet all IT quality standards and policies?	How well do your apps meet your end users’ needs?	What is the relative cost of ownership and operation of your apps?
Application rationalization requires the collection of several data points that represent these perspectives and act as the criteria for determining a disposition for each of your applications. Disposition: The intended strategic direction or implied course of action for an application.

3.1-3.4 APM worksheet data journey map

Assessing application business value

First, the authorities on business value need to define and weigh their value drivers that describe the priorities of the organization.

This will then allow the applications team to apply a consistent, objective, and strategically aligned evaluation of applications across the organization.

In this context…business value is the value of the business outcome that the application produces and how effective the application is at producing that outcome.

Business value IS NOT the user’s experience or satisfaction with the application.

Review the value drivers of your applications

	Financial vs. Human Benefits Financial benefits refer to the degree to which the value source can be measured through monetary metrics and are often quite tangible. Human benefits refer to how an application can deliver value through a user’s experience. Inward vs. Outward Orientation Inward orientation refers to value sources that have an internal impact and improve your organization’s effectiveness and efficiency in performing its operations. Outward orientation refers to value sources that come from your interaction with external factors, such as the market or your customers.

3.1 Assess business value

Estimated time: 1 -4 hours

1. Review Info-Tech’s four quadrants of business value: increase revenue/value, reduce costs, enhance services, and reach customers. Edit your value drivers, description, and scoring on the “Rationalization Inputs” worksheet. For each value driver, update the key indicators specific to your organization’s priorities. When editing the scoring descriptions, keep only the one you are using.
2. (Optional) Add an additional value driver if your organization has distinct value drivers (e.g. compliance, sustainability, innovation, and growth).
3. For each application, score on a scale of 0 to 5 how impactful the application is for each value driver. Use the indicators set in Phase 1 to guide your scoring.
4. For each value driver, adjust the criteria weighting to match its relative importance to the organization. Start with a balanced or low weighting. Adjust the weights to ensure that the category score matches your relative values and priorities.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

3.1 Weigh value drivers: Example

For additional support in implementing a balanced value framework, refer to Build a Value Measurement Framework.

Understand the back end and technical health of your applications

Technical health identifies the extent of technology risk to the organization.

MAINTAINABILITY (RAS)

RAS refers to an app’s reliability, availability, and serviceability. How often, how long, and how difficult is it for your resources to keep an app functioning, and what are the resulting continuity risks? This can include root causes of maintenance challenges.

• Optimize Systems Management to Improve IT Resilience and Proactivity and Establish a Program to Enable Effective Performance Monitoring

SECURITY

Applications should be aligned and compliant with ALL security policies. Are there vulnerabilities or is there a history of security incidents? Remember that threats are often internal and non-malicious.

• Build an Information Security Strategy

ADAPTABILITY

How easily can the app be enhanced or scaled to meet changes in business needs? Does the app fit within the business strategy?

• Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision

INTEROPERABILITY

The degree to which an app is integrated with current systems. Apps require comprehensive technical planning and oversight to ensure they connect within the greater application architecture. Does the app fit within your enterprise architecture strategy?

• Design an Enterprise Architecture Strategy

BUSINESS CONTINUITY/DISASTER RECOVERY

The degree to which the application is compatible with business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) policies and plans that are routinely tested and verified.

• Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan

Unfortunately, the business only cares about what they can see or experience. Rationalization is your opportunity to get risk on the business’ radar and gain buy-in for the necessary action.

3.2 Assess technical health

Estimated time: 1-4 hours

1. Review Info-Tech’s suggested technical health criteria. Edit your criteria, descriptions, and scoring on the “Rationalization Inputs” worksheet. For each criterion, update the key indicators specific to your organization’s priorities.
2. For each application, score on a scale of 1 to 5 on how impactful the application is for each criterion.
3. For each criterion, adjust the weighting to match its relative importance to the organization. Start with a balanced or low weighting. Adjust the weights to ensure that the category score matches your relative values and priorities.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

End users provide valuable perspective

Your end users are your best means of determining front-end issues.

Data Quality

To what degree do the end users find the data quality sufficient to perform their role and achieve their desired outcome?

Effectiveness

To what degree do the end users find the application effective for performing their role and desired outcome?

Usability

To what degree do the end users find the application reliable and easy to use to achieve their desired outcome?

Satisfaction

To what degree are end users satisfied with the features of this application?

What else matters to you?

Tune your criteria to match your values and priorities.

Info-Tech Best Practice

When facing large user groups, do not make assumptions or use lengthy methods of collecting information. Use Info-Tech’s Application Portfolio Assessment to collect data by surveying your end users’ perspectives.

3.3 Assess end-user perspective

Estimated time: 1-4 hours

1. Review Info-Tech’s suggested end-user perspective criteria. Edit your criteria, descriptions and scoring on the “Rationalization Inputs” worksheet. For each criterion, update the key indicators specific to your organization’s priorities.
2. For each application, score on a scale of 1 to 5 on how impactful the application is for each criterion.
3. For each criterion, adjust the weighting to match its relative importance to the organization. Start with a balanced or low weighting. Adjust the weights to ensure that the category score matches your relative values and priorities.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

Consider the spectrum of application cost

An application’s cost extends past a vendor’s fee and even the application itself.

LICENSING AND SUBSCRIPTIONS: Your recurring payments to a vendor.

Many commercial off-the-shelf applications require a license on a per-user basis. Review contracts and determine costs by looking at per-user or fixed rates charged by the vendor.

MAINTENANCE COSTS: Your internal spending to maintain an app.

These are the additional costs to maintain an application such as support agreements, annual maintenance fees, or additional software or hosting expenses.

INDIRECT COSTS: Miscellaneous expenses necessary for an app’s continued use.

Expenses like end-user training, developer education, and admin are often neglected, but they are very real costs organizations pay regularly.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT: Perceived value of the application related to its TCO.

Some of our most valuable applications are the most expensive. ROI is an optional criterion to account for the value and importance of the application.

Info-Tech Best Practice

The TCO assessment is one area where what you are considering the ”application” matters quite a bit. An application’s peripherals or software components need to be considered in your estimates. For additional help calculating TCO, use the Application TCO Calculator from Build a Rationalization Framework.

3.4 Assess total cost of ownership

Estimated time: 1-4 hours

1. Review Info-Tech’s suggested TCO criteria. Edit your criteria, descriptions, and scoring on the “Rationalization Inputs” worksheet. For each criterion, update the key indicators specific to your organization’s priorities.
2. For each application, score on a scale of 1 to 5 on how impactful the application is for each criterion.
3. For each criterion, adjust the weighting to match its relative importance to the organization. Start with a balanced or low weighting. Adjust the weights to ensure that the category score matches your relative values and priorities.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

Phase 4

Populate Your Roadmap

his phase involves the following participants:

• Applications Lead
• Delivery Leads

Additional Resources

• Disposition Prioritization Tool
• Application Rationalization Tool

Review your APM Snapshot

4.1 Review your APM Snapshot results

Estimated time: 1-2 hours

1. The APM Snapshot provides a dashboard to support your APM program’s focus and as an input to demand planning. Unhide the “Group 3” worksheet if you completed the alignment matrix.
2. For each grouping area, review the results to determine underperforming areas. Use this information to prioritize your application root cause analysis and demand planning. Use the key on the following slide to guide your analysis.
3. Analysis guidance:
   1. Start with the quartile grouping to find areas scoring in Remediate or Critical Need and focus follow-up actions on these areas.
   2. Use the lens/category heat map to determine which lenses are underperforming. Use this to then look up the individual app scores supporting that group to identify application issues.
   3. Use the “Application Comparison” worksheet to select and compare applications for the group to make your review and comparison easier.
   4. Work with teams in the group to provide root cause analysis for low scores.
   5. Build a plan to address any apps not supported by IT.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

Interpreting your APM Snapshot

4.1 APM worksheet data journey map

Review your APM rationalization results

4.2 Review your APM Foundations results

Estimated time: 1-2 hours

The APM Foundations Results dashboard (“App Rationalization Results” worksheet) provides a detailed summary of your relative app scoring to serve as input to demand planning.

1. For each grouping, review the results to determine underperforming app support. Use this information to prioritize your application root cause analysis using the individual criteria scores on the “Rationalization Inputs” worksheet.
2. Use guidance on the following example slides to understand each area of the results.
3. Any applications marked as N/A for evaluation will display N/A on the results worksheet and will not be displayed in the chart. You can still enter dispositions.
4. Use the column filters to compare a subset of applications or use the “App Comparison” worksheet to maintain an ongoing view by grouping, redundancy, or category.
5. Any applications marked as N/A for evaluation will display N/A on the results worksheet and will not be displayed in the chart. You can still enter dispositions.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

4.2 APM worksheet data journey map

Interpreting your APM Foundations results

Interpreting your APM Foundations chart

Modernize your applications

Apply Info-Tech’s 6 R’s Rationalization Disposition Model

Disposition Description Reward Prioritize new features or enhancement requests and openly welcome the expansion of these applications as new requests are presented. Refresh Address the poor end-user satisfaction with a prioritized project. Consult with users to determine if UX issues require improvement to address satisfaction. Refocus Determine the root cause of the low value. Refocus, retrain, or refresh the UX to improve value. If there is no value found, aim to "keep the lights on" until the app can be decommissioned. Replace Replace or rebuild the application as technical and user issues are putting important business capabilities at risk. Decommission application alongside replacement. Remediate Address the poor technical health or risk with a prioritized project. Further consult with development and technical teams to determine if migration or refactoring is suited to address the technical issue. Retire Cancel any requested features and enhancements. Schedule the proper decommission and transfer end users to a new or alternative system if necessary.

TCO, compared relatively to business value, helps determine the practicality of a disposition and the urgency of any call to action. Application alignment is factored in when assessing redundancies and has a separate set of dispositions.

4.3 Determine dispositions

Estimated time: 1-4 hours

1. The Recommended Disposition and Priority fields are prepopulated from your scoring thresholds and options on the “Disposition Options” worksheet. You can update any individual application disposition or priority using the drop-down menu and it will populate your selection on the “Roadmap” worksheet.
2. Question if that disposition is appropriate. Be sure to consider:
   1. TCO – cost should come into play for any decisions.
   2. Alignment to strategic goals set for the overarching organizational, IT, technology (infrastructure), or application portfolio.
   3. Existing organizational priorities or funded initiatives impacting the app.
3. Some dispositions may imply a call to action, new project, or initiative. Ideate and/or discuss with the team any potential initiatives. You can use different dispositions and priorities on the “App Rationalization Results” and “Roadmap” worksheets.
4. Note: Modify the list of dispositions on the “Disposition Options” worksheet as appropriate for your rationalization initiative. Any modifications to the Disposition column will be automatically updated in the “App Rationalization Results” and “Roadmap” worksheets.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

4.3 APM worksheet data journey map

Redundancies require a different analysis and set of dispositions

Solving application redundancy is a lot more complicated than simply keeping one application and eliminating the others.

First, you need to understand the extent of the redundancy. The applications may support the same capability, but do they offer the same functions? Determine which apps offer which functions within a capability. This means you cannot accurately arrive at a disposition until you have evaluated all applications.

Next, you need to isolate the preferred system. This is completed by comparing the same data points collected for rationalization and the application alignment analysis. Cost and coverage of all necessary functions become the more important factors in this decision-making process.

Lastly, for the non-preferred redundant applications you need to determine: What will you do with the users? What will you do with the data? And what can you do with the functionality (can the actual coding be merged onto a common platform)?

Compare groups of applications

4.4 Assess redundancies (optional)

Estimated rime: 1 hour per group

This exercise is best performed after aligning business capabilities to applications across the portfolio and identifying your areas of redundancy. At this stage, this is still an information collection exercise, and it will not yield a consolidation-based disposition until applied to all relevant applications. Lastly, this exercise may still be at too high a level to outline the full details of redundancy, but it is still vital information to collect and a starting point to determine which areas require more concentrated analysis.

1. Determine which areas of redundancy or comparisons are desired. Duplicate the “App Comparison” worksheet for each grouping or comparison.
2. Extend the comparison to better identify redundancy.
   1. For each area of redundancy, identify the high-level features. Aim to limit the features to ten, grouping smaller features if necessary. SoftwareReviews can be a resource for identifying common features.
   2. Label features using the MoSCoW model: must have, should have, could have, will not have.
   3. For each application, identify which features they support. You can use the grouping alignment matrix as a template for feature alignment comparison. Duplicate the worksheet, unlock it, and replace the grouping cell references with your list of features.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

4.4 Assess redundancies (optional)

4.5 Determine dispositions for redundant applications (optional)

Estimated time: 1 hour per group

1. Based on the feature-level assessment, determine if you can omit applications if they don’t truly overlap with other applications.
2. Make a copy of the “App Comparison” worksheet and select the applications you want to compare based on your functional analysis.
3. Determine the preferred application(s). Use the diagram to inform your decision. This may be the application closest to the top right (strong health and value). However, less expensive options or any options that provide a more complete set of features may be preferable.
4. Open the “App Rationalization Results” worksheet. Update your disposition for each application.
5. Use these updated dispositions to determine a call to action, new project, or initiative. Ideate and/or discuss with the team any potential initiatives. Update your roadmap with these initiatives in the next step.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

Compare application groups

Group comparison can be used for more than just redundant/overlapping applications.

Roadmaps are used for different purposes

Roadmaps are used for different communication purposes and at varying points in your application delivery practice. Some use a roadmap to showcase strategy and act as a feedback mechanism that allows stakeholders to validate any changes (process 1). Others may use it to illustrate and communicate approved and granular elements of a change to an application to inform appropriate stakeholders of what to anticipate (process 2).

The steps between selecting a disposition and executing on any resulting project will vary based on the organization’s project intake standards (or lack thereof).

This blueprint focuses on building a strategic portfolio roadmap prior to any in-depth assessments related to initiative/project intake, approval, and prioritization. For in-depth support related to intake, approval, prioritization, or planning, review the following resources.

Determine what makes it onto the roadmap

A roadmap should not be limited to what is approved or committed to. A roadmap should be used to present the items that need to happen and begin the discussion of how or if this can be put into place. However, not every idea should make the cut and end up in front of key stakeholders.

4.6 Prioritize initiatives

Estimated time: 1-4 hours

1. This is a high-level assessment to provide a sense of feasibility, practicality, and priority as well as an estimated timeline of a given initiative. Do not get lost in granular estimations. Use this as an input to your demand planning process.
2. Enter the specific name or type of initiative.
   1. Process Initiative: Any project or effort focused on process improvements without technical modification to an app (e.g. user migration, change in SLA, new training program). Write the application and initiative name on a blue sticky note.
   2. App Initiative: Any project or effort involving technical modification to an app (e.g. refactoring, platform migration, feature addition or upgrade). Write the application and initiative name on a yellow sticky note.
   3. Decommission Initiative: Any project and related efforts to remove an app (e.g. migrating data, removal from server). Write the application and initiative name on a red sticky note.
3. Prioritize the initiative to aid in demand planning. This is prepopulated from your selected application disposition, but you can set a different priority for the initiative here.
4. Select the Initiative Phase in the timeline to show the intended schedule and sequencing of the initiative.

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

4.6 APM worksheet data journey map

Populate roadmap example

Create a recurring update plan

• Application inventories become stale before you know it. Build steps in your procurement process to capture the appropriate information on new applications. Also, build in checkpoints to revisit your inventory regularly to assess the accuracy of inventory data.
• Rationalization is not one and done; it must occur with an appropriate cadence.
  • Business priorities change, which will impact the current and future value of your apps.
  • Now more than ever, user expectations evolve rapidly.
  • Application sprawl likely won’t stop, so neither will shadow IT and redundancies.
  • Obsolescence, growing technical debt, changing security threats, or shifting technology strategies are all inevitable, as is the gradual decline of an app’s health or technical fit.
• An application’s disposition changes quicker than you think, and rationalization requires a structured cadence. You need to plan to minimize the need for repeated efforts. Conversely, many use preceding iterations to increase the analysis (e.g. more thorough TCO projections or more granular capability-application alignment).
• Portfolio roadmaps require a cadence for both updates and presentations to stakeholders. Updates are often completed semiannually or quarterly to gauge the business adjustments that affect the timeline of the domain-specific applications. The presentation of a roadmap should be completed alongside meetings or gatherings of key decision makers.
• M&A or other restructuring events will prompt the need to address all the above.

Build your APM maturity by taking the right steps at the right time

Info-Tech’s Build an Application Rationalization Framework provides additional TCO and value tools to help build out your portfolio strategy.

APM is an iterative and evergreen process

APM provides oversight and awareness of your application portfolio’s performance and support for your business operations and value delivery to all users and customers.

Repeat according to APM cadence and application changes

4.7 Ongoing APM cadence

Estimated time: 1-2 hours

1. Determine how frequently you will update or present the artifacts of your APM practice: Application Inventory, Rationalization, Disposition, and Roadmap.
2. For each artifact, determine the:
   1. Owner: Who is accountable for the artifact and the data or information within the artifact and will be responsible for or delegate the responsibility of updating or presenting the artifact to the appropriate audience?
   2. Update Cadence: How frequently will you update the artifact? Include what regularly scheduled meetings this activity will be within.
   3. Update Scope: Describe what activities will be performed to keep the artifact up to date. The goal here is to minimize the need for a full set of activities laid out within the blueprint. Optional: How will you expand the thoroughness of your analysis?
   4. Audience: Who is the audience for the artifact or assessment results?
   5. Presentation Cadence: How frequently and when will you review the artifact with the audience?

Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

4.7 Ongoing APM cadence

Appendices

• Additional support slides
• Bibliography

The APM tool provides a single source of truth and global data sharing

The table shows where source data is used to support different aspects of APM discovery, rationalization, and modernization.

Common application inventory attributes

Common application inventory attributes

Bibliography

”2019 Technology & Small Business Survey.” National Small Business Association (NSBA), n.d. Accessed 1 April 2020.
“Application Rationalization – Essential Part of the Process for Modernization and Operational Efficiency.” Flexera, 2015. Web.
“Applications Rationalization during M&A: Standardize, Streamline, Simplify.” Deloitte Consulting, 2016. Web.
Bowling, Alan. “Clearer Visibility of Product Roadmaps Improves IT Planning.” ComputerWeekly.com, 1 Nov. 2010. Web.
Brown, Alex. “Calculating Business Value.” Agile 2014 Orlando, 13 July 2014. Scrum Inc. 2014. Web.
Brown, Roger. “Defining Business Value.” Scrum Gathering San Diego 2017. Agile Coach Journal. Web.
“Business Application Definition.” Microsoft Docs, 18 July 2012. Web.
“Connecting Small Businesses in the US.” Deloitte Consulting, 2017. Accessed 1 April. 2020.
Craveiro, João. “Marty meets Martin: connecting the two triads of Product Management.” Product Coalition, 18 Nov. 2017. Web.
Curtis, Bill. “The Business Value of Application Internal Quality.” CAST, 6 April 2009. Web.
Fleet, Neville, Joan Lasselle, and Paul Zimmerman. “Using a Balance Scorecard to Measure the Productivity and Value of Technical Documentation Organizations.” CIDM, April 2008. Web.
Fowler, Martin. “Application Boundary.” MartinFowler.com, 11 Sept. 2003. Web.
Harris, Michael. “Measuring the Business Value of IT.” David Consulting Group, 2007. Web.
“How Application Rationalization Contributes to the Bottom Line.” LeanIX, 2017. Web.
Jayanthi, Aruna. “Application Landscape Report 2014.” Capgemini, 4 March 2014. Web.
Lankhorst, Marc., et al. “Architecture-Based IT Valuation.” Via Nova Architectura, 31 March 2010. Web.
“Management of business application.” ServiceNow, Jan.2020. Accessed 1 April 2020.
Mauboussin, Michael J. “The True Measures of Success.” HBR, Oct. 2012. Web.
Neogi, Sombit., et al. “Next Generation Application Portfolio Rationalization.” TATA, 2011. Web.
Riverbed. “Measuring the Business Impact of IT Through Application Performance.” CIO Summits, 2015. Web.
Rouse, Margaret. “Application Rationalization.” TechTarget, March 2016. Web.
Van Ramshorst, E.A. “Application Portfolio Management from an Enterprise Architecture Perspective.” Universiteit Utrecht, July 2013.
“What is a Balanced Scorecard?” Intrafocus, n.d. Web.
Whitney, Lance. “SMBs share their biggest constraints and great challenges.” Tech Republic, 6 May 2019. Web.

Establish Effective Data Stewardship

Leverage your organization's business subject matter experts to drive impactful data use and handling.

Analyst perspective

Leverage your organization's business subject matter experts to drive impactful data use and handling.

Data stewards bring valuable expertise and knowledge about their business areas: priorities, business capabilities and processes, and challenges and opportunities with respect to data. Because this knowledge cannot be easily replicated, going outside your organization to hire a data steward is not the most effective route.

While it may seem difficult, organizing internally to harvest the already existing institutional knowledge of your business subject matter experts (SMEs) will give a better – and faster – return when setting up and formalizing data stewardship.

The role must be well defined and communicated. We cannot expect SMEs to wear a hat without understanding the expectations for their role. They must be set up for success – they must be empowered, recognized, and rewarded.

Crystal Singh
Director, Research and Advisory, Data and Analytics Practice
Info-Tech Research Group

Phase breakdown

Phase 1: Data Stewardship Value Proposition

• Define the value of data stewardship and data governance, their importance, and the relationship between them.
• Determine where data stewards fit in the bigger data governance operating structure. The data steward role will not be effective without the other data governance roles.
• Highlight the gains of effective data stewardship: e.g. data quality management, data definition, data sharing, and the ethical use and handling of data.

Phase breakdown

Phase 2: Data Steward Role Design

• Who makes a good data steward? Important knowledge and skills include subject area expertise, institutional knowledge, collaborative skills, interpersonal, and political skills, an understanding of your organization's culture, and the ability to build good partnerships across business functions and with data management.
• Seek out SMEs from within your organization. This may require you to mold and shape individuals to step up and into the role. An external hire will give capacity but will be more difficult (and time consuming) to ramp up.
• Consult internally in your organization. For example, consult and liaise with Human Resources (HR) to determine if job descriptions need to be updated, if there would be any impact to compensation, etc.
• Determine if this role needs to be a full-time role.
• Demystify the role. Clarify that this is not an IT role and therefore will not require IT skills.
• Leverage Info-Tech data governance patterns:
  • Data Stewardship in Action – Sample Data Quality Issue Resolution Process Template and Business Term and Data Definitions
  • Sample Data Steward (and Data Owner) to Data Domain Mapping

Phase breakdown

Phase 3: Strategies for Data Stewardship Success

• Establish a solid data governance foundation in your organization.
• Develop data stewardship onboarding: e.g. literacy and training, and frequently asked questions (FAQs).
• Gain support from data owners, the director general (DG) committee, data leadership, and executive leaders/champions.
• Set up rewards and recognition for the role.
• Establish a feedback loop/mechanism for data stewards so the stewardship program can be adjusted accordingly.
• Establish communication and create awareness of the role.

Establishing effective data stewardship

Leverage your organization's business SMEs to drive impactful data use and handling.

Unlock the value of data through people.

Data Steward Value Proposition
Clearly articulate the data stewardship value proposition. What's in it for the person, their line of business or mandate, and your organization as a whole.

Data Steward Role Design
Formally design and define the role of a data steward, including the functions and capabilities.

Strategies for Success
Set up your data stewards for success. Having a detailed role definition on paper is not enough. Ensure that you go the extra mile to deliver the relevant training, such as data stewardship onboarding and an awareness program.

Executive summary

Info-Tech Insight
Effective data governance requires a solid foundation. Data stewards provide the foundation for data governance. The time and effort to define this role properly will yield sound data governance return.

Phase 1: Data Stewardship Value Proposition

What is the VALUE of a DATA STEWARD?

Value of a Data Steward

Improved Data Quality Management

Clear and Consistent Data Definition

Increased Data Sharing and Collaboration

Ethical Handling of Data

Define the strategic value of data in your organization

Harness the value of data to power intelligent and transformative organizational performance.

Optimize the way you serve your stakeholders.

Respond to industry disruption.

Develop products and services to meet ever-evolving needs.

Manage operations and mitigate risk.

Data governance is an enabling framework of decision rights, responsibilities, and accountabilities for data assets across an organization.

Data governance is:

• Executed according to agreed-upon models that describe who can take what actions with what information, when, and using what methods (CIO.com, 2021).
• True business-IT collaboration that leads to increased consistency and confidence in data to support decision making

If done correctly, data governance is not:

• An annoying, finger-waving roadblock in the way of getting things done
• An inhibitor or impediment to using and sharing data

Data governance is about putting guard rails in place to better support the use and handling of your organization's data.

Is there a clear definition of data accountability and responsibility in your organization?

Accelerate Business Growth and Valuation By Building Brand Awareness

Develop and deploy comprehensive, multi-touchpoint brand awareness strategies to become the trusted brand that buyers think of first.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst perspective

Building brand awareness

Achieving high brand awareness in a given market and becoming the benchmark for buyers

is what every brand wants to achieve, as it is a guarantee of success. Building brand awareness,

even though its immediate benefits are often difficult to see and measure, is essential for companies that want to stand out from their competitors and continue to grow in a sustainable way. The return on investment (ROI) may take longer, but the benefits are also greater than those achieved through short-term initiatives with the expectation of immediate, albeit often limited, results.

Brands that are familiar to their target market have greater credibility, generate more sales,

and have a more loyal customer base. CMOs that successfully execute brand awareness programs

build brand equity and grow company valuation.

Nathalie Vezina
Marketing Research Director
SoftwareReviews Advisory

Executive summary

Brand leaders know that brand awareness is essential to the success of all marketing and sales activities. Brands that fail to invest in brand awareness are likely to face some, if not all these problems:

• Lack of brand visibility and compelling storytelling.
• Inability to reach the target audience.
• Low engagement on digital platforms and with ads.
• Difficulties generating and converting leads, or closing/winning sales/deals, and facing a high cost per acquisition.
• Low/no interest or brand recognition, trust level, and customer retention rate.
• Inability to justify higher pricing.

Convincing stakeholders of the benefits of strong brand awareness can be difficult when the positive outcomes are hard to quantify, and the return on investment (ROI) is often long-term. Among the many obstacles brand leaders must overcome are:

• Lack of longer-term corporate vision, focusing all efforts and resources on short-term growth strategies for a quick ROI.
• Insufficient market and target buyers' information and understanding of the brand's key differentiator.
• Misalignment of brand message, and difficulties creating compelling content that resonates with the target audience, generates interest, and keeps them engaged.
• Limited or no resources dedicated to the development of the brand.

Inspired by top-performing businesses and best practices, this blueprint provides the guidance and tools needed to successfully build awareness and help businesses grow. By following these guidelines, brand leaders can expect to:

• Gain market intelligence and a clear understanding of the buyer's needs, your competitive advantage, and key differentiator.
• Develop a clear and compelling value proposition and a human-centric brand messaging driven by the brand's values.
• Increase online presence and brand awareness to attract and engage with buyers.
• Develop a long-term brand strategy and execution plan.

"A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another."

– Seth Godin

What is brand awareness?

The act of making a brand visible and memorable.

Brand awareness is the degree to which buyers are familiar with and recognize the attributes and image of a particular brand, product, or service. The higher the level of awareness, the more likely the brand is to come into play when a target audience enters the " buying consideration" phase of the buyer's journey.

Brand awareness also plays an important role in building equity and increasing business valuation. Brands that are familiar to their target market have greater credibility, drive more sales and have a more loyal customer base.
Building brand awareness allows increasing:

• Brand visibility, perception, recognition, and reputation
• Interactions and engagement with the target audience
• Digital advertising performance and ROI
• Conversion rates and sales wins
• Revenue and profitability
• Market share and share of voice (SOV)
• Talents, partners, and investors attraction and retention
• Brand equity, business growth, and market valuation

"Products are made in a factory, but brands are created in the mind."
Source: Walter Landor

Capitalizing on a powerful brand

A longer-term approach for an increased and more sustainable ROI.

Market leader position

Developing brand awareness is essential to increase the visibility and traction of a brand.

Several factors may cause a brand to be not well-known. One reason might be that the brand recently launched, such as a startup. Another reason could be that the brand has rebranded or entered a new market.

To become the trusted brand that buyers think of first in their target markets, it is critical for these brands to develop and deploy comprehensive, multi-touchpoint brand awareness strategies.

A relationship leading to loyalty

A longer-term brand awareness strategy helps build a strong relationship between the brand and the buyer, fostering a lasting and rewarding alliance.

It also enables brands to reach and engage with their target audience effectively by using compelling storytelling and meaningful content.

Adopting a more human-centric approach and emphasizing shared values makes the brand more attractive to buyers and can drive sales and gain loyalty.

Sustainable business growth

For brands that are not well established in their target market, short-term tactics that focus on immediate benefits can be ineffective. In contrast, long-term brand awareness strategies provide a more sustainable ROI (return on investment).

Investing in building brand awareness can impact a business's ability to interact with its target audience, generate leads, and increase sales. Moreover, it can significantly contribute to boosting the business's brand equity and market valuation.

"Quick wins may work in the short term, but they're not an ideal substitute for long-term tactics and continued success."
Source: Forbes

Impacts of low brand awareness on businesses

Unfamiliar brands, despite their strong potential, won't thrive unless they invest in their notoriety.

Brands that choose not to invest in longer-term awareness strategies and rely solely on short-term growth tactics in hopes of an immediate gain will see their ability to grow diminished and their longevity reduced due to a lack of market presence and recognition.

Symptoms of a weakening brand include:

• High marketing spending and limited result
• Low market share or penetration
• Low sales, revenue, and gross margin
• Weak renewal rate, customer retention, and loyalty
• Difficulties delivering on the brand promise, low/no trust in the brand
• Limited brand equity, business valuation, and sustainability
• Unattractive brand to partners and investors

"Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business."
Source: Steve Forbes

Most common obstacles to increasing brand awareness

Successfully building brand awareness requires careful preparation and planning.

• Limited market intelligence
• Unclear competitive advantage/key differentiator
• Misaligned and inconsistent messaging and storytelling
• Lack of long-term vision
• and low prioritization
• Limited resources to develop and execute brand awareness building tactics
• Unattractive content that does not resonate, generates little or no interest and engagement

Investing in the notoriety of the brand

Become the top-of-mind brand in your target market.

To stand out, be recognized by their target audience, and become major players in their industry, brands must adopt a winning strategy that includes the following elements:

• In-depth knowledge and understanding of the market and audience
• Strengthening digital presence and activities
• Creating and publishing content relevant to the target audience
• Reaching out through multiple touchpoints
• Using a more human-centric approach
• Ensure consistency in all aspects of the brand, across all media and channels

How far are you from being the brand buyers think of first in your target market?

Brand awareness pyramid

Based on David Aaker's brand loyalty pyramid

Tactics for building brand awareness

Focus on effective ways to gain brand recognition in the minds of buyers.

Brand recognition requires in-depth knowledge of the target market, the creation of strong brand attributes, and increased presence and visibility.

Understand the market and audience you're targeting

Be prepared. Act smart.

To implement a winning brand awareness-building strategy, you must:

• Be aware of your competitor's strengths and weaknesses, as well as yours.
• Find out who is behind the keyboard, and the user experience they expect to have.
• Plan and continuously adapt your tactics accordingly.
• Make your buyer the hero.

Identify the brands' uniqueness

Find your "winning zone" and how your brand uniquely addresses buyers' pain points.

Focus on your key differentiator

A brand has found its "winning zone" or key differentiator when its value proposition clearly shows that it uniquely solves its buyers' specific pain points.

Align with your target audience's real expectations and successfully interact with them by understanding their persona and buyer's journey. Know:

• How you uniquely address their pain points.
• Their values and what motivates them.
• Who they see as authorities in your field.
• Their buying habits and trends.
• How they like brands to engage with them.

Give your brand a voice

Define and present a consistent voice across all channels and assets.

The voice reflects the personality of the brand and the emotion to be transmitted. That's why it's crucial to establish strict rules that define the language to use when communicating through the brand's voice, the type of words, and do's and don'ts.

To be recognizable it is imperative to avoid inconsistencies. No matter how many people are behind the brand voice, the brand must show a unique, distinctive personality. As for the tone, it may vary according to circumstances, from lighter to more serious.

Up to 80% Increased customer recognition when the brand uses a signature color scheme across multiple platforms
Source: startup Bonsai
23% of revenue increase is what consistent branding across channels leads to.
Source: Harvard Business Review

When we close our eyes and listen, we all recognize Ella Fitzgerald's rich and unique singing voice.

We expect to recognize the writing of Stephen King when we read his books. For the brand's voice, it's the same. People want to be able to recognize it.

Adopt a more human-centric approach

If your brand was a person, who would it be?

Human attributes

Physically attractive

• Brand identity
• Logo and tagline
• Product design

Intellectually stimulating

• Knowledge and ideas
• Continuous innovation
• Thought leadership

Sociable

• Friendly, likeable and fun
• Confidently engage with audience through multiple touchpoints
• Posts and shares meaningful content
• Responsive

Emotionally connected

• Inspiring
• Powerful influencer
• Triggers emotional reactions

Morally sound

• Ethical and responsible
• Value driven
• Deliver on its promise

Personable

• Honest
• Self-confident and motivated
• Accountable

0.05 Seconds is what it takes for someone to form an opinion about a website, and a brand.
Source: 8ways

90% of the time, our initial gut reaction to products is based on color alone.
Source: startup Bonsai

56% of the final b2b purchasing decision is based on emotional factors.
Source: B@B International

Put values at the heart of the brand-buyers relationship

Highlight values that will resonate with your audience.

Brands that focus on the values they share with their buyers, rather than simply on a product or service, succeed in making meaningful emotional connections with them and keep them actively engaged.

Shared values such as transparency, sustainability, diversity, environmental protection, and social responsibility become the foundation of a solid relationship between a brand and its audience.

The key is to know what motivates the target audience.

86% of consumers claim that authenticity is one of the key factors they consider when deciding which brands they like and support.
Source: Business Wire

56% of the final decision is based on having a strong emotional connection with the supplier.
Source: B2B International

64% of today's customers are belief-driven buyers; they want to support brands that "can be a powerful force for change."
Source: Edelman

"If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand."
– Howard Schultz
Source: Lokus Design

Double-down on digital

Develop your digital presence and reach out to your target audiences through multiple touchpoints.

Beyond engaging content, reaching the target audience requires brands to connect and interact with their audience in multiple ways so that potential buyers can form an opinion.

With the right message consistently delivered across multiple channels, brands increase their reach, create a buzz around their brand and raise awareness.

73% of today's consumers confirm they use more than one channel during a shopping journey
Source: Harvard Business Review

Platforms

• Website and apps
• Social media
• Group discussions

Multimedia

• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Publication

Campaign

• Ads and advertising
• Landing pages
• Emails, surveys drip campaigns

Network

• Tradeshows, events, sponsorships
• Conferences, speaking opportunities
• Partners and influencers

Use social media to connect

Reach out to the masses with a social media presence.

Social media platforms represent a cost-effective opportunity for businesses to connect and influence their audience and tell their story by posting relevant and search-engine-optimized content regularly on their account and groups. It's also a nice gateway to their website.

Building a relationship with their target buyer through social media is also an easy way for businesses to:

• Understand the buyers.
• Receive feedback on how the buyers perceive the brand and how to improve it.
• Show great user experience and responsiveness.
• Build trust.
• Create awareness.

75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-Suite executives use social media when considering a purchase
Source: LinkedIn Business

92% of B2B buyers use social media to connect with leaders in the sales industry.
Source: Techjury

With over 4.5 billion social media users worldwide, and 13 new users signing up to their first social media account every second, social media is fast becoming a primary channel of communication and social interaction for many.
Source: McKinsey

Become the expert subject matter

Raise awareness with thought leadership content.

Thought leadership is about building credibility
by creating and publishing meaningful, relevant content that resonates with a target audience.
Thought leaders write and publish all kinds of relevant content such as white papers, ebooks, case studies, infographics, video and audio content, webinars, and research reports.
They also participate in speaking opportunities, live presentations, and other high-visibility forums.
Well-executed thought leadership strategies contribute to:

• Raise awareness.
• Build credibility.
• Be recognized as a subject expert matter.
• Become an industry leader.

60% of buyers say thought leadership builds credibility when entering a new category where the brand is not already known.
Source: Edelman | LinkedIn

70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles rather than advertising.
Source: Brew Interactive

57% of buyers say that thought leadership builds awareness for a new or little-known brand.
Source: Edelman | LinkedIn

To achieve best results

• Know the buyers' persona and journey.
• Create original content that matches the persona of the target audience and that is close to their values.
• Be Truthful and insightful.
• Find the right tone and balance between being human-centric, authoritative, and bold.
• Be mindful of people's attention span and value their time.
• Create content for each phase of the buyer's journey.
• Ensure content is SEO, keyword-loaded, and add calls-to-action (CTAs).
• Add reason to believe, data to support, and proof points.
• Address the buyers' pain points in a unique way.

Avoid

• Focusing on product features and on selling.
• Publishing generic content.
• Using an overly corporate tone.

Promote personal branding

Rely on your most powerful brand ambassadors and influencers: your employees.

The strength of personal branding is amplified when individuals and companies collaborate to pursue personal branding initiatives that offer mutual benefits. By training and positioning key employees as brand ambassadors and industry influencers, brands can boost their brand awareness through influencer marketing strategies.

Personal branding, when well aligned with business goals, helps brands leverage their key employee's brands to:

• Increase the organization's brand awareness.
• Broaden their reach and circle of influence.
• Show value, gain credibility, and build trust.
• Stand out from the competition.
• Build employee loyalty and pride.
• Become a reference to other businesses.
• Increase speaking opportunities.
• Boost qualified leads and sales.

About 90% of organizations' employee network tends to be completely new to the brand.
Source: Everyone Social

8X more engagement comes from social media content shared by employees rather than brand accounts.
Source: Entrepreneur

561% more reach when brand messages are shared by employees on social media, than the same message shared by the Brand's social media.
Source: Entrepreneur

"Personal branding is the art of becoming knowable, likable and trustable."
Source: Founder Jar, John Jantsch

Invest in B2B influencer marketing

Broaden your reach and audiences by leveraging the voice of influencers.

Influencers are trusted industry experts and analysts who buyers can count on to provide reliable information when looking to make a purchase.

Influencer marketing can be very effective to reach new audiences, increase awareness, and build trust. But finding the right influencers with the level of credibility and visibility brands are expecting can sometimes be challenging.

Search for influencers that have:

• Relevance of audience and size.
• Industry expertise and credibility.
• Ability to create meaningful content (written, video, audio).
• Charismatic personality with values consistent with the brand.
• Frequent publications on at least one leading media platform.

76% of people say that they trust content shared by people over a brand.
Source: Adweek

44% increased media mention of the brand using B2B influencer marketers.
Source: TopRank Marketing

Turn your customers into brand advocates

Establish customer advocacy programs and deliver a great customer experience.

Retain your customers and turn them into brand advocates by building trust, providing an exceptional experience, and most importantly, continuously delivering on the brand promise.

Implement a strong customer advocacy program, based on personalized experiences, the value provided, and mutual exchange, and reap the benefits of developing and growing long-term relationships.

92% of individuals trust word-of-mouth recommendations, making it one of the most trust-rich forms of advertising.
Source: SocialToaster

Word-of-mouth (advocacy) marketing increases marketing effectiveness by 54%
Source: SocialToaster

Make your brand known and make it stick in people's minds

Building and maintaining high brand awareness requires that each individual within the organization carry and deliver the brand message clearly and consistently across all media whether in person, in written communications, or otherwise.

To achieve this, brand leaders must first develop a powerful, researched narrative that people will embrace and convey, which requires careful preparation.

Target market and audience intel

• Target market Intel
• Buyer persona and journey/pain points
• Uniqueness and positioning

Brand attributes

• Values at the heart of the relationship
• Brand's human attributes

Brand visibly and recall

• Digital and social media presence
• Thought leadership
• Personal branding
• Influencer marketing

Brand awareness building plan

• Long-term awareness and multi-touchpoint approach
• Monitoring and optimization

Short and long-term benefits of increasing brand awareness

Brands are built over the long term but the rewards are high.

• Stronger brand perception
• Improved engagement and brand associations
• Enhanced credibility, reputation, and trust
• Better connection with customers
• Increased repeat business
• High-quality leads
• Higher and faster conversion rate
• More sales closed/ deals won
• Greater brand equity
• Accelerated growth

"Strong brands outperform their less recognizable competitors by as much as 73%."
Source: McKinsey

Brand awareness building

Building brand awareness, even though immediate benefits are often difficult to see and measure, is essential for companies to stand out from their competitors and continue to grow in a sustainable way.

To successfully raise awareness, brands need to have:

• A longer-term vision and strategy.
• Market Intelligence, a clear value proposition, and key differentiator.
• Consistent, well-aligned messaging and storytelling.
• Digital presence and content.
• The ability to reach out through multiple touchpoints.
• Necessary resources.

Without brand awareness, brands become less attractive to buyers, talent, and investors, and their ability to grow, increase their market value, and be sustainable is reduced.

Brand awareness building methodology

Define brands' personality and message

• Gather market intel and analyze the market.
• Determine the value proposition and positioning.
• Define the brand archetype and voice.
• Craft a compelling brand message and story.
• Get all the key elements of your brand guidelines.

Start building brand awareness

• Achieve strategy alignment and readiness.
• Create and manage assets.
• Deploy your tactics, assets, and workflows.
• Establish key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Monitor and optimize on an ongoing basis.

Toolkit

• Market and Influencing Factors Analysis
• Recognition Survey and Best Practices
• Buyer Personas and Journeys
• Purpose, Mission, Vision, Values
• Value Proposition and Positioning
• Brand Message, Voice, and Writing Style
• Brand Strategy and Tactics
• Asset Creation and Management
• Strategy Rollout Plan

Short and long-term benefits of increasing brand awareness

Increase:

• Brand perception
• Brand associations and engagement
• Credibility, reputation, and trust
• Connection with customers
• Repeat business
• Quality leads
• Conversion rate
• Sales closed / deals won
• Brand equity and growth

It typically takes 5-7 brand interactions before a buyer remembers the brand.
Source: Startup Bonsai

Who benefits from this brand awareness research?

This research is being designed for:
Brand and marketing leaders who:

• Know that brand awareness is essential to the success of all marketing and sales activities.
• Want to make their brand unique, recognizable, meaningful, and highly visible.
• Seek to increase their digital presence, connect and engage with their target audience.
• Are looking at reaching a new segment of the market.

This research will also assist:

• Sales with qualified lead generation and customer retention and loyalty.
• Human Resources in their efforts to attract and retain talent.
• The overall business with growth and increased market value.

This research will help you:

• Gain market intelligence and a clear understanding of the target audience's needs and trends, competitive advantage, and key differentiator.
• The ability to develop clear and compelling, human-centric messaging and compelling story driven by brand values.
• Increase online presence and brand awareness activities to attract and engage with buyers.
• Develop a long-term brand awareness strategy and deployment plan.

This research will help them:

• Increase campaign ROI.
• Develop a longer-term vision and benefits of investing in longer-term initiatives.
• Build brand equity and increase business valuation.
• Grow your business in a more sustainable way.

SoftwareReviews' brand awareness building methodology

Insight summary

Brands to adapt their strategies to achieve longer-term growth
Brands must adapt and adjust their strategies to attract informed buyers who have access to a wealth of products, services, and brands from all over. Building brand awareness, even though immediate benefits are often difficult to see and measure, has become essential for companies that want to stand out from their competitors and continue to grow in a sustainable way.

A more human-centric approach
Brand personalities matter. Brands placing human values at the heart of the customer-brand relationship will drive interest in their brand and build trust with their target audience.

Stand out from the crowd
Brands that develop and promote a clear and consistent message across all platforms and channels, along with a unique value proposition, stand out from their competitors and get noticed.

A multi-touchpoints strategy
Engage buyers with relevant content across multiple media to address their pain points. Analyze touchpoints to determine where to invest your efforts.

Going social
Buyers expect brands to be active and responsive in their interactions with their audience. To build awareness, brands are expected to develop a strong presence on social media by regularly posting relevant content, engaging with their followers and influencers, and using paid advertising. They also need to establish thought leadership through content such as white papers, case studies, and webinars.

Thought leaders wanted
To enhance their overall brand awareness strategy, organizations should consider developing the personal brand of key executives. Thought leadership can be a valuable method to gain credibility, build trust, and drive conversion. By establishing thought leadership, businesses can increase brand mentions, social engagement, website traffic, lead generation, return on investment (ROI), and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Save time and money with SoftwareReviews' branding advice

Collaborating with SoftwareReviews analysts for inquiries not only provides valuable advice but also leads to substantial cost savings during branding activities, particularly when partnering with an agency.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with a SoftwareReviews Marketing Analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

Your engagement managers will work with you to schedule analyst calls.

Brand awareness building tools

Each step of this blueprint comes with tools to help you build brand awareness.

Brand Awareness Tool Kit

This kit includes a comprehensive set of tools to help you better understand your target market and buyers, define your brand's personality and message, and develop an actionable brand awareness strategy, workflows, and rollout plan.

The set includes these templates: Market and Influencing Factors Analysis Recognition Survey and Best Practices Buyer Personas and Journeys Purpose, Mission, Vision, and Values Value Proposition and Positioning Brand Message, Voice, and Writing Style Brand Strategy and Tactics Asset Creation and Management Strategy Rollout Plan

Get started!

Know your target market and audience, deploy well-designed strategies based on shared values, and make meaningful connections with people.

Phase 1

Define brands' personality and message

Phase 2

Start building brand awareness

Phase 1

Define brands' personality and message

Steps

1.1 Gather market intelligence and analyze the market.
1.2 Develop and document the buyer's persona and journey.
1.3 Uncover the brand mission, vision statement, core values, positioning, and value proposition.
1.4 Define the brand's archetype and tone of voice, then craft a compelling brand messaging.

Phase outcome

• Target market and audience are identified and documented.
• A clear value proposition and positioning are determined.
• The brand personality, voice, and messaging are developed.
• All the key elements of the brand guidelines are in place. and ready to use, along with the existing logo, typography, color palette, and imagery..

Build brands' personality and message

Step 1.1 Gather market intelligence and analyze the market.

Total duration: 2.5-8 hours

Objective

Analyze and document your competitive landscape, assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats, gauge the buyers' familiarity with your brand, and identify the forces of influence.

Output

This exercise will allow you to understand your market and is essential to developing your value proposition.

Participants

• Head of branding and key stakeholders

MarTech
May require you to:

• Register to a Survey Platform.
• Use, setup, or install platforms like CRM and/or Marketing Automation Platform.

Tools

• Market Analysis Template
• Brand Recognition Survey Questionnaire and List Template and Survey Emails Best Practices Guidelines
• External and Internal Factors Analysis Template

Consult SoftwareReviews website to find the best survey and MarTech platforms or contact one of our analysts for more personalized assistance and guidance

Brand performance diagnostic

Have you considered diagnosing your brand's current performance before you begin building brand awareness?

Audit your brand using the Diagnose Brand Health to Improve Business Growth blueprint.Collect and interpret qualitative and quantitative brand performance measures.

The toolkit includes the following templates:

• Surveys and interviews questions and lists
• External and internal factor analysis
• Digital and financial metrics analysis

Also included is an executive presentation template to communicate the results to key stakeholders and recommendations to fix the uncovered issues.

Build brands' personality and message

Step 1.2 Develop and document the buyer's persona and journey.

Total duration: 4-8 hours

Objective

Gather existing and desired customer insights and conduct market research to define and personify your buyers' personas and their buying behaviors.

Output

Provide people in your organization with clear direction on who your target buyers are and guidance on how to effectively reach and engage with them throughout their journey.
Participants

• Head of branding
• Key stakeholders from sales and product marketing

MarTech
May require you to:

• Register to an Online Survey Platform (free version or subscription).
• Use, setup, or installation of platforms like CRM and/or Marketing Automation Platform.

Tools

• Buyer Personas and Journeys Presentation Template
• Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Workbook
• Buyer Persona and Journey Interview Guide and Data Capture

Consult SoftwareReviews website to find the best survey platform for your needs or contact one of our analysts for more personalized assistance and guidance

Buyer Personas and Journeys

A well-defined buyer persona and journey is a great way for brands to ensure they are effectively reaching and engaging their ideal buyers through a personalized buying experience.

When properly documented, it provides valuable insights about the ideal customers, their needs, challenges, and buying decision processes allowing the development of initiatives that correspond to the target buyers.

Build brands' personality and message

Step 1.3 Uncover the brand mission, vision statement, core values, value proposition, and positioning.

Total duration: 4-5.5 hours

Objective
Define the "raison d'être" and fundamental principles of your brand, your positioning in the marketplace, and your unique competitive advantage.

Output
Allows everyone in an organization to understand and align with the brand's raison d'être beyond the financial dimension, its current positioning and objectives, and how it intends to achieve them.
It also serves to communicate a clear and appealing value proposition to buyers.

Participants

• Head of branding
• Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
• Key stakeholders

Tools

• Brand Purpose, Mission, Vision, and Values Template
• Value Proposition and Positioning Statement Template

Build brands' personality and message

Steps 1.4 Define the brand's archetype and tone of voice, and craft a compelling brand messaging.

Total duration: 5-8 hours

Objective

Define your unique brand voice and develop a set of guidelines, brand story, and messaging to ensure consistency across your digital and non-digital marketing and communication assets.
Output

A documented brand personality and voice, as well as brand story and message, will allow anyone producing content or communicating on behalf of your brand to do it using a unique and recognizable voice, and convey the right message.

Participants

• Head of branding
• Content specialist
• Chief Executive Officer and other key stakeholders

Tools

• Brand Voice Guidelines Template
• Writing Style Guide Template
• Brand Messaging Template
• Writer Checklist Template

Important Tip!

A consistent brand voice leads to remembering and trusting the brand. It should stand out from the competitors' voices and be meaningful to the target audience. Once the brand voice is set, avoid changing it.

Phase 2

Start building brand awareness

Steps

2.1 Achieve strategy alignment and readiness.
2.2 Create assets and workflows, and deploy tactics.
2.3 Establish key performance indicators (KPIs), monitor, and optimize on an ongoing basis.

Phase outcome

• A comprehensive and actionable brand awareness strategy, with tactics, KPIs, and metrics, is set and ready to execute.
• A progressive and effective deployment plan with deliverables, timelines, workflows, and checklists is in place.
• Resources are assigned.

Start building brand awareness

Step 2.1 Achieve strategy readiness and alignment.

Total duration: 4-5 hours

Objective

Now that you have all the key elements of your brand guidelines in place, in addition to your existing logo, typography, color palette, and imagery, you can begin to build brand awareness.

Start planning to build brand awareness by developing a comprehensive and actionable brand awareness strategy with tactics that align with the company's purpose and objectives. The strategy should include achievable goals and measurables, budget and staffing considerations, and a good workload assessment.

Output

A comprehensive long-term, actionable brand awareness strategy with KPIs and measurables.

Participants

• Head of branding
• Key stakeholders

Tools

• Brand Awareness Strategy and Tactics Template

Understanding the difference between strategies and tactics

Strategies and tactics can easily be confused, but although they may seem similar at times, they are in fact quite different.

Strategies and tactics are complementary.

A strategy is a plan to achieve specific goals, while a tactic is a concrete action or set of actions used to implement that strategy.

To be effective, brand awareness strategies should be well thought-out, carefully planned, and supported by a series of tactics to achieve the expected outcomes.

Start building brand awareness

Step 2.2 Create assets and workflows and deploy tactics.

Total duration: 3.5-4.5 hours

Objective

Build a long-term rollout with deliverables, milestones, timelines, workflows, and checklists. Assign resources and proceed to the ongoing development of assets. Implement, manage, and continuously communicate the strategy and results to key stakeholders.

Output

Progressive and effective development and deployment of the brand awareness-building strategy and tactics.

Participants

• Head of branding

Tools

• Asset Creation and Management List
• Campaign Workflows Template
• Brand Awareness Strategy Rollout Plan Template