Service Detail

Application Portfolio Rationalization

Cut through complexity and overlap in your application landscape. Nexinc helps you build a fact-based view of your portfolio and make confident decisions on what to keep, modernize, consolidate, or retire — with a clear link to business capabilities and cost.

Who this is for

CIOs, IT leaders, enterprise architects, and finance partners who need to understand what they really run today and where to safely reduce cost, risk, and technical debt.

Typical triggers

• Rising run cost with unclear value from key systems.
• M&A, carve-outs, or large transformation programmes.
• Duplicated tools across regions / business units and no single, trusted inventory.

Engagement length

Typical rationalization engagements run 6–10 weeks, depending on the size and data quality of your portfolio and the depth of analysis you require.

What we do in this engagement

• Build or refine your application inventory — including ownership, lifecycle, interfaces, cost, and usage.
• Map applications to business capabilities and processes to reveal overlap, gaps, and critical dependencies.
• Assess functional fit, technical health, and business criticality using structured criteria and stakeholder input.
• Design target-state portfolios for key domains (e.g. sales, supply chain, finance) with consolidation and simplification options.
• Translate findings into roadmaps and waves that respect dependencies and realistic change capacity.
• Prepare narratives and visuals to support funding and approval with executives and finance.

What you get as concrete outputs

• A clean, structured application inventory (spreadsheet and/or imported into tools like LeanIX).
• Application heatmaps by capability, business value, risk, and cost for transparent decision-making.
• A rationalization decision set (keep / invest, modernize, consolidate, retire) for key applications.
• One or more target-state portfolio views per domain, including consolidation candidates.
• A practical roadmap and wave plan with indicative cost, benefit, and risk considerations.
• Presentation-ready exec pack summarizing rationale, options, and recommendations.

Outcomes you can expect

Reduced cost & overlap

Discover where you pay twice for similar tools and how to safely simplify — often freeing up budget for real innovation.

Lower operational risk

Identify fragile, obsolete, or ownerless applications and define a plan to stabilize or retire them.

Clearer transformation path

Move from a messy list of systems to a structured roadmap that connects technology rationalization to business capabilities and strategy.

How we typically work with you

1. Scope & baseline. We agree the systems in scope, key data fields, and success criteria, then consolidate existing inventories and finance data.
2. Assess & map. Through interviews and data analysis we evaluate health, usage, and value, and map applications to capabilities and processes.
3. Analyse & design. We identify consolidation opportunities, quick wins, and target portfolios per domain, running review sessions with stakeholders.
4. Decide & plan. Together we confirm decisions and shape a realistic execution plan with waves, owners, and next steps.

Explore rationalization for your portfolio

In a 45-minute call we’ll review your current landscape, discuss data availability, and outline a lightweight but effective rationalization approach tailored to your context.

Schedule a Discovery Call

Or email us at info@nexinc.consulting.