Four engagements that solve four different versions of the same problem. Most organizations need one of them to start with — the question is which, and the answer usually depends on whether your issue is the applications, the contracts, the duplication, or the deal.
Eliminate app sprawl before it eliminates your budget.
The core engagement. Discover everything that is actually running, score it on business value, technical health, utilization and cost, then retire, consolidate or keep — with a decision trail that survives being challenged.
How it worksStart here if
Start here if you do not have a reliable inventory, or if you know the portfolio has grown and nobody owns the question.
Most common in
HealthcareStop paying for software nobody opens.
Entitlement-level work on what you already own — over-provisioned seats, wrong tiers, auto-renewals nobody tracks, enterprise agreements priced on metrics that stopped matching how you are structured.
How it worksStart here if
Start here if the applications are broadly justified but the contracts have drifted, or if a major renewal is coming up.
Most common in
Financial ServicesOne capability, one platform, one data model.
For estates where the same job is done several different ways. Capability mapping across teams or sites, a defensible target state, and migration effort priced honestly before anything is committed to.
How it worksStart here if
Start here if the individual applications are all defensible but you are running six variants of the same thing.
Most common in
ManufacturingCollect the synergies you underwrote.
Deal-pace integration work. Overlap mapped in the first fortnight, decisions by day sixty, duplicate contracts cancelled before they renew — sequenced by the renewal calendar rather than by system importance.
How it worksStart here if
Start here if you have closed a deal, or are about to, and the IT synergy number needs somebody accountable for it.
Most common in
Private Equity & M&A01
Everything actually running, not everything procurement has a record of. The gap between those two is usually the story.
02
Business value, technical health, utilization and cost, scored separately. Usage data before the workshop, not after it.
03
Keep, consolidate, migrate or retire — with the owning stakeholder given the chance to challenge the data before it is final.
04
Dependency checks, phased retirement, verified savings — plus the governance that stops the portfolio re-accumulating.
From the Blog
AI tools are being adopted one person at a time, under every approval threshold, often with no purchase at all. Same problem as shadow IT, moving far faster — and invoice-based discovery will not find it.
Rationalization projects rarely fail loudly — they stall. The six failure modes we see most often, what each looks like from the inside, and what to do instead.
Every other guide assumes you already have approval. This one is for the stage before that — estimating the saving before you've measured it, and selling it to finance and department heads at the same time.
The discipline that separates enterprises that control their software portfolio from those that are controlled by it — and how to build it inside your organization.
Everything you need to know about rationalizing your enterprise application portfolio — from building the initial inventory to retiring your first app and tracking savings.
A step-by-step walkthrough of the software portfolio audit process — from pulling the initial license inventory to scoring applications for rationalization.
That is what the free assessment is for. Thirty minutes, no commitment, and you will leave knowing where to start.
Book Your Free Assessment