If you are looking for the continued health of your enterprise software, you better resolve to do the following steps:

1. Check out what software you have and which ones are really important to your business.

Check out your current applications to see what you have.  Then determine which ones are important to your business.  Chances are you will find that only a minority of your software are really important.  Some software you use are foundational to the enterprise applications you have, while the rest of the software in your portfolio are not really needed at all.  Trim down your enterprise software portfolio to save on costs.  This way, you could also prioritize and focus on those that are essential to your software.

2. Determine the status of your applications.

Take a look at your trimmed-down portfolio and see which software are getting old and which ones are delivering a lot less value than they should.

In particular, figure out which software are not fully addressing your business needs.  Or which ones are so outdated that they do not support mobile and social functionality.  Or which among your software have a suite of management tools or a user-friendly interface.

Additionally, you should gauge whether or not the software you are currently using have the capability to leverage virtualization technologies, cloud platforms or even 64-bit systems, as well as other top technologies of today.

Other questions you need to ask at this point include:

• Are these software easy to manage, administer and maintain?
• Are these software compatible with other software or other platforms?
• Are these software still very secure or do they comply with policies both internal and external?

3. Plan for the future.

Now that you know what software you have and whether these are still giving you the best value, you need to plan for the future of your enterprise software portfolio.

Talk to your software provider to see what they are planning to do with the software you are using from them.  This will help you know what new features and functionalities are coming up. In turn, you’ll know when to upgrade and could get the latest technology and innovations with your software.  Upgrades are much more affordable than having to replace your existing software with new ones.

Upgrade may also help you save from having to customize the software, in order to make it perform optimally for our business.

Furthermore, you must also create a technology strategy that is in line with your long-term business goals.  This should include a plan to replace or upgrade your software as they become obsolete or unnecessary.

These steps are very important because it keeps you from jumping onto the “new” bandwagon.  Instead of being blinded by new innovations and new software, focus on stable enterprise software solutions that you already have in place.  This, without ignoring the fact that you would, at some point, need to replace the enterprise software you are currently using.

Four Cornerstone can help you manage your Oracle software for every stage of its lifecycle.  Call us today!

Photo courtesy of plantoo47.