See the future, guide the future with APM

[Lilly Souksamla]

In the last blog we looked at the idea of organizational agility and the way that it drives continuous and adaptive planning.  We considered how application portfolio management (APM) can allow technology leaders to support the business in making better change decisions in less time.  But organizations can’t simply react to shifting external environments, they must be proactive – defining the future that they want to deliver, and then executing on the investments that will make that happen. 

That requires strong collaboration between business and technology leaders to ensure that the evolution of the business is always being optimized by the evolution of technology capabilities, and APM is a critical contributor to that process.  That’s more than adjusting technology roadmaps to remain aligned with the strategic roadmaps of the business. 

The ever-evolving technology landscape requires IT leaders to continuously review their current and planned technological capabilities to ensure that they remain appropriate.  That in turn will result in the identification of opportunities that can be leveraged by the business.  We tend to focus on headline technologies in that regard – what are the business opportunities created by artificial intelligence (AI) advances for example.  But even mundane advances in application capabilities create opportunities to accelerate business plans, or to diversify those plans into directions that weren’t previously considered feasible. 

APM provides technology leaders with the ability to quickly adjust their plans in response to those technological advancements, understanding dependencies and implications of proposed changes, and modeling different options to understand the threats and opportunities.  This in turn allows those leaders to provide advice and guidance to business leaders on how technology can be leveraged to advance the strategic priorities of the business.  IT leaders aren’t just responding to the priorities of the business, they’re helping to define what’s possible and drive those priorities. 

This provides business leaders with the confidence needed to commit to strategic goals that might otherwise be seen as unrealistic, or at best risky.  Aligning strategic portfolio management (SPM) roadmaps with APM roadmaps helps the entire organization understand how objectives will be achieved, drives better decisions and provides visibility for all stakeholders – IT and business. 

But only if an organization is able to rely on its APM information.  A roadmap is only as good as the data underlying it. Integrating APM and SPM is only possible with a common technology platform.  And modeling of options to provide insight into better decision making is only possible with tools capable of supporting that analysis.  That’s where ServiceNow comes in. 

Not only does our APM solution offer you the ability to create and manage roadmaps, aligned to business value streams, as part of the Now platform it seamlessly integrates with other ServiceNow applications – such as SPM.  This provides leaders with an integrated, enterprise-wide view of all assets, capabilities and value streams, allowing for planning that encompasses all business priorities and technologies, while also ensuring that the delivery of the investments approved to achieve those priorities occurs seamlessly.

No one else can give you that. 

Interested in learning more? Visit us online and find out how ServiceNow APM can help you plan for a new tomorrow.  

Read the next in the blog series here. 

Read the previous blog in the series here.

Learn more about Application Portfolio Management here.

Learn more about Strategic Portfolio Management here.