The only constant is change - understand capabilities to support the business with APM

[Lilly Souksamla]

Over the last few years organizations have been pursuing the ideal of organizational or enterprise agility.  This is the idea that the business needs to be able to adapt and adjust to shifting circumstances as quickly as possible, and with the minimum amount of disruption.  Put simply, when the market demands something different, the organization can deliver seamlessly.  And it’s not always external customers, it’s also internal systems, processes and approaches.

Most of the need for this change is directly or indirectly driven by technology.  Either advancements in technology enable new solutions, new approaches and new ways of working; or technology drives the need for change through the actions of competitors, evolving customer expectations and so on.

As a result, technology leaders are critical to the success of organizational agility, and those technology leaders need to leverage the capabilities of application portfolio management (APM).  Organizations can only adjust their plans, and implement those changes at the speed of the slowest element.  APM provides technology leaders with a complete, immediate understanding of the technology landscape.  That allows them to not only identify options for adjustments to recommend to their business partners, but also the implications of each of those options, the opportunities created, and so on.

This partnership, and the ability for technology leaders to understand technology in a business context is an essential part of continuous and adaptive planning.  That in turn is the key to creating organizational agility. Planning changes, work adjustments and the constant need to maintain alignment between what is being done and what needs to be achieved, can only be optimized if organizations have the ability to confidently determine how best to execute on shifting needs.  That’s simply impossible without APM.

APM enables better changes – leaders can make better decisions with more confidence because they have a greater understanding of the current technology environment and the possible ways that environment can evolve.  And APM enables faster change – because that level of insight is immediately to hand there is no need for time consuming analysis once the need for change is identified. Instead, different options can be modeled and the best fit identified quickly and decisively.

But none of this happens without the right tools. It’s not enough to have an APM tool, not to have a strategic portfolio management (SPM) application to drive planning and investment changes.  Organizations need both of these things operating together – using the same platform and the same data. That’s what ServiceNow offers. With our unique Now platform, organizations can connect every aspect of their business, allowing for faster decisions in less time.

And then, when those decisions are made, the changes can be implemented just as quickly. This minimizes disruption, maximizes efficiency, and ensures that no matter how many times things change, strategic priorities, work, outcomes, and the applications that support everything, are operating as one.

Read the next blog in the series here

Read the previous blog in the series here

Learn more about Application Portfolio Management here

Learn more about Strategic Portfolio Management here