To keep your technology infrastructure healthy and cost effective, business leaders need to establish reoccurring goals that focus on the organizations software infrastructure. These goals center around understanding the organizations software footprint, plans to eliminate unnecessary software and to further integrate that software which provides value. It's easy to identify the software that exits within the corporate umbrella, but these goals are focused towards understanding the peripheral software that exists within your organization and falls outside the corporate support processes.

Remember that software exists in many forms, such as a photo editing tool or corporate accounting system. Software may be created by a developer or consultant using high-end development tools. Additionally, be aware of the software that others may have created through the use of macros in one of the many office products. All of these are software that our business may depend upon, and they need to be evaluated for the value they provide, and for costs that are associated to maintaining these applications within our organization.

First, establish short term goals to fully understand your organizations software footprint. Establish a reporting structure to identify those specialized applications that exist, but fall outside of your organizational standards. If you have Microsoft Office products deployed in your enterprise, there is a high likelihood there are macro filled spreadsheets supporting your organization, you need to know about these specialized pieces of software so they can be properly evaluated.

Then create midterm goals that are focused on understanding the true value and cost for each software that was identified. You will then determine identify what software needs to be removed, what needs to be reevaluated at a later date, and which software should be more fully integrated within the organization. Be sure to carefully understand how each software is integrated into a department?s processes and culture, the removal of a software to hastily could reveal a much larger than expected impact to the organization.

Finally, develop long term goals that are focused on integrating the identified software into the larger organizational structure. This process shouldn?t necessarily be focused on adding the identified software to the organization; this process should include evaluating the cost benefit between including the identified software within the organizational standard, versus extending existing organizational software to include those processes that the identified software provides.

Keeping your business efficient requires you include processes that allow you to gain and maintain a complete understanding of your organizations software infrastructure. Create time based goals to properly identify your organizations software, provide adequate time for evaluation process, and develop timelines that remove or envelop the identified software into the larger organizational standard. Performing this valuation process annually will help keep your software infrastructure healthy and efficient.