Application Audits

The Problem

Companies are increasingly pressured on all fronts when it comes to IT: as software complexity increases and sourcing becomes global and more complicated to manage, IT applications need to evolve faster to meet growing business requirements. And they are looking to business and technical consultant to help them to continue to grow their business while keeping their costs down and making the most out of their existing software assets.

Yet in most cases, the clients themselves have no easy mechanism to monitor the performance qualitatively and quantitatively of their development teams for the applications they manage. Most of the assessment work is done manually and at a very high cost. That's why they come to you. Indeed, with very high expectations. In order to provide your clients with the best service possible you need to differentiate your offerings to quickly bring more value and build up client confidence in having made the right choice to work with you, opening up the way for future business opportunities, while keeping your margins as high as possible.


The Solution

CAST Application Intelligence Platform  can be used to take “snapshots” of applications considered as at-risk to make sure their complexity and size are not “getting out of hand”. Your clients benefit from a preliminary and concrete diagnostic of their system through:

  • Cost reduction – Identify and control the root causes of application costs
    • Detailed, objective measures of application robustness, changeability, and transferability.
    • Critical performance, quality and benchmark information on all applications in the portfolio
    • Prioritized list of cost hotspots, drilling down to their root causes.
    • Precise practical guidance to quickly plug cost drains at their source.
    • A report listing the application’s cost drivers, quantifying their relative size, identifying the root causes of cost escalation risks, and practical guidance on how to significantly reduce operational costs.
  • Risk Reduction - Identify and control the root causes of business disruption risk
    • Detailed, objective measures of application performance, data security and robustness
    • A prioritized list of business disruption hot spots, drilling down to their root causes
    • Precise practical guidance to quickly reduce disruption risks at their source
    • A report listing the application’s risk drivers, quantifying their relative size, identifying the root causes of disruption risks, and practical guidance on how to significantly reduce business disruption

Because the analysis is automated, you are able to produce high-quality, fact-based results in a limited amount of time, reducing your overall price for fixed-cost projects and improving your overall margins. By carrying out a technical audit on the applications' health, you are now in a better position to make concrete recommendations and help your clients in their upcoming technical projects spanning their entire portfolio such as: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Re-Engineering, Modernization, Migration but also AD Governance or Application Outsourcing, and many more.


The Results

Your clients benefit from all-inclusive services with a high added-value.  In return you get:

  • Increase revenue-adding the Application Audit to your product list is a sure-fire way to grow revenue
  • Differentiated offering-distinguished by the ability to gain deep insight into the key architectural characteristics that drive cost and risk
  • Tactical way to penetrate new accounts & up-sell technical projects-powered by the synthesis of the insight from the audit  
  • Higher business margins-deeper insight allows for high value and higher margin services