About the client
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Industry | Manufacturing |
| Size | Mid-size company, 50-250 employees |
| Ownership | Private, family-owned |
| Sponsor | CFO in collaboration with the owner |
| Geography | Czech Republic + export activities in EU |
Starting point
The company had grown organically for more than a decade. Its IT environment expanded driven by individual departmental needs — production planning, quality, logistics, sales, HR. Each area historically got its own tool, often without coordination with others. Over time, the environment became opaque even to the IT department itself.
Nobody in the company had a complete picture of what was actually in use. The internal IT manager knew the main systems, but for some of the smaller applications his answer was: “I’m not exactly sure who uses it or who manages it.” The CFO saw growing annual licence and support costs but couldn’t prioritise them. The owner sensed that “something needs to be done about IT” but didn’t know where to start.
What the problem was
- No overview — there was no up-to-date list of all applications, their functions, or their owners
- Rising costs — annual licence and support spend was growing without a clear reason
- Some applications were clearly unused, yet the company was still paying for them
- Duplicates existed — applications doing similar things running side by side
- Risk hotspots — critical tools running on outdated infrastructure with no replacement plan
- Key-person dependencies — several systems were only understood by one person, with no documentation
What I did
The engagement lasted approximately 8 weeks and ran in four phases. The core methodology was the TIME framework from Gartner.
1. Inventory (2 weeks)
I assembled a complete list of all applications. Sources included:
- Interviews with department heads — “what tools does your team actually use”
- The IT manager and his list of officially managed systems
- Finance — an overview of licence fees and service contracts
- Network analysis — applications that appeared in real traffic but weren’t documented anywhere
For each application I recorded: purpose, users, estimated active usage, internal owner, vendor, licence model, annual cost, location (cloud / on-prem), and criticality to operations.
2. Categorisation (1 week)
I categorised each application using the TIME framework (Tolerate / Invest / Migrate / Eliminate):
- Tolerate — working well, maintain efficiently, no additional investment
- Invest — strategically important, invest in development
- Migrate — replace or modernise within 2–3 years
- Eliminate — unused, duplicate, or replaceable — candidate for retiring
Categorisation was not an IT-only decision; it happened in collaboration with the department heads who actually use the applications.
3. Analysis and prioritisation (2 weeks)
Based on the categorisation I produced:
- Quick-win register — applications to retire immediately and contracts to let expire
- Consolidation plan — where two solutions can be merged into one
- Strategic investment roadmap — where to invest systematically over the next 2–3 years
- Risk register — critical applications lacking adequate backup, documentation, or knowledge coverage
4. Presentation and handover (3 weeks)
I presented findings progressively to the management team, IT, and key department heads. Some findings sparked discussion and priority adjustments. The final document was approved at a management meeting and became the basis for the IT budget for the following year.
What the client received
- Complete application register — updateable, structured format in the corporate wiki
- Portfolio categorisation using TIME with rationale for each application
- Quick-win action plan — specific applications to eliminate or consolidate within 6 months
- Strategic roadmap for the next 2–3 years
- Risk register with mitigation plan for identified risk areas
- Executive presentation with summary and financial impact
What the impact was
The portfolio review identified savings in the hundreds of thousands of CZK per year after executing the quick wins — licences and service fees for applications in the Eliminate category. 10–25% of applications in the total portfolio were categorised for retiring or consolidation. The result was a clear 2-year IT investment plan with priorities, serving as input for budgeting and strategic decision-making.
Beyond the direct financial savings, the company gained a strategic document that worked at management level. IT investment decisions stopped being reactive and started coming from a categorised view of the entire portfolio. Six months after the engagement ended, the client had completed six recommended retirings and was continuing gradual consolidation according to the roadmap.
A less visible but equally important impact was the naming of risks. For the first time, the company had in writing where the key-person dependencies were, where documentation was missing, and where an outage would cause the most damage. That opened space for systematic remediation.
A note from practice
An interesting observation from this engagement: several of the applications flagged for elimination were ones the IT manager himself already suspected were problematic. What he lacked was the “mandate” to change anything — nobody had formally said the application should be retired. The portfolio review created a structured framework in which an “IT problem” became a strategic decision. The application register and categorisation then served as a tool the IT manager could use to make the case to management and to application owners in individual departments.
Related service
This application portfolio review combined elements of IT audit and strategy (strategic view, current-state map, risks) and IT cost optimisation (concrete savings, action plan).