In today’s world the ability to control costs is paramount. Economic uncertainty means organizations must optimize spending at every level. One area that is coming under scrutiny for cost optimization is technology. Forrester reports that upgrading, refreshing, and consolidating business applications, hardware and software is the number one priority for organizations.i And Gartner lists cost optimization as a top three priority, pointing out that organizations waste millions of dollars on standalone asset management tools and limited, short-sighted processes that don’t help drive performance.ii The challenge that organizations are facing is to identify what to optimize when and then deliver on those decisions. Technology executives know their organizations need to align enterprise architecture and IT asset management with each other. In reality, architects and asset managers are frequently hampered by data and operating silos, resulting in inaccurate and incomplete visibility into the current state. They also experience poor alignment of technology investments with business strategy, in large part because of those same data and tool challenges. What if asset management and enterprise architect teams collaborated across the technology lifecycle? ServiceNow’s solution provides a single platform to optimize technology spend and mitigate risk. Leveraging the Now Platform – the intelligent platform for end-to-end digital transformation – empowers both asset management and enterprise architect teams with a single view of the technology portfolio and its components. ServiceNow’s IT asset management and application portfolio management solutions enable technology executives to manage all application, hardware, software, and cloud lifecycles on a single platform. This way, organizations can confidently decide and act to update, refresh or consolidate technology. To scale their achievements, it's crucial for both enterprise architecture and IT asset management teams to orient their technology optimization objectives with the overarching strategy. ServiceNow’s strategic portfolio management aligns goals for both teams, making sure everyone is working toward the same desired outcomes. How can this be achieved? Through a simple, three step maturity journey, each stage aims at helping organizations deliver the maximum benefit for the minimum disruption. These three stages include: Consolidate A single platform, architecture, and data model to plan tech and manage related assets to reduce redundancies and risk. Automate Processes designed to align teams and drive collaboration throughout the tech lifecycle. Optimize Continually improve spend practices and mitigate risk to maximize the value of technology investments. Let’s explore them in more detail. Optimize spend, mitigate risks, and deliver success — the way it should be Optimize cost and mitigate risk to maximize return on tech investments Optimize ServiceNow’s approach to optimize technology spend and mitigate risk Scale results to save money and reduce risk Automate to align teams and drive collaboration throughout the tech lifecycle Automate Quick wins using consolidated data Drive efficiency from decision to action Consolidate Use a single platform to plan technology and manage related assets Future-ready intelligent platform. Single data model for action. 2 Consolidate: Quick wins with consolidated data and tools Consolidation is the foundation for an organization’s success. It sees the elimination of standalone tools and the removal of inefficient processes. Here, organizations develop a single centralized inventory of hardware and software assets, along with key technical characteristics and the alignment of technology with business capabilities. This provides immediate insight into redundant applications, high risk assets, and so on, while also eliminating data silos, redundancies, and gaps. This greater insight into technology, and the ability to manage applications, hardware, software, and cloud infrastructure from one place, immediately allows an organization to streamline capability planning and the management of technology lifecycles.