Step 2: Enrich Data

Enrich your data by evaluating application criticality and bringing in technology lifecycle information.

Effective obsolescence risk management requires maintaining an up-to-date IT component inventory with essential details such as lifecycle state and vendor support information. Establishing relationships between IT components and the applications they support is also crucial for aggregating risk to the business layer. SAP LeanIX simplifies technology risk management by rolling up the risks of IT components to the application level.

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Aggregating Obsolescence Risk Through Technical Platforms

When you have the need to model technical platforms, we recommend using IT component fact sheets to represent them. This approach allows obsolescence risks to be aggregated to the technical platforms and subsequently to the applications. To learn more, see Aggregating Obsolescence Risk Through Technical Platforms.

Evaluate Business Criticality and Functional Fit of Applications

Before focusing on IT components, understand the importance of each application to the business and assess how well it aligns with current functional requirements. This helps you prioritize applications for mitigation efforts, allowing you to concentrate on the most critical applications first.

Ensure that the evaluation of business criticality and functional fit of your applications is kept current in application fact sheets. Make use of surveys, to-dos, and Excel import features for effective collaboration and data collection from relevant stakeholders.

Capturing Business Criticality and Functional Fit in Application Fact Sheets

Capturing Business Criticality and Functional Fit in Application Fact Sheets

You can also make use of surveys to ask relevant application owners to assess both the functional fit and business criticality of applications. SAP LeanIX offers free survey templates that you can download from the store and use to collect the required information. To learn more, see Designing a Survey from Existing Survey and Survey Template.

The relevant survey templates are:

Link IT Components to the Reference Catalog

Provision the reference catalog from the Admin settings and link catalog items to your IT component fact sheets. The reference catalog automatically updates lifecycle status, version, support type, support status information, and more. This simplifies end-of-life asset management and brings clarity in making informed decisions about upgrades, transformations, or replacements. For more information, see IT Components in the Reference Catalog.

Linking IT Component Fact Sheets to Catalog Items

Linking IT Component Fact Sheets to Catalog Items

Start by linking the IT components where our recommendation engine has found matches with very high or high confidence based on name comparison. Use the confidence level filter in the bulk linking functionality of the catalog to narrow down the list.

Confidence Level Filter in the Catalog Bulk Linking Functionality

Confidence Level Filter in the Catalog Bulk Linking Functionality

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Note

You can raise data requests in-tool if you need information about an IT component that is not already included in the reference catalog. For more detail, see Report Missing Data in Catalog Items.

Monitor Data Completeness

You can make use of the Obsolescence: Missing Data Percentage view in reports to get an overview of fact sheets lacking lifecycle information. The missing data percentage view analyzes applications lacking lifecycle information, displaying the percentage of IT components supporting each application without such data.

  • In the Application Landscape report, apply the Obsolescence: Missing Data Percentage view to identifying applications that lack needed information critical for risk evaluation. From the report Settings, cluster the applications by Business Criticality and explore further to identify your mission-critical IT components and link them to catalog items.

    Obsolescence: Missing Data Percentage view in Application Landscape Report

    Obsolescence: Missing Data Percentage view in Application Landscape Report

  • Technology Risk and Compliance provides a dedicated obsolescence risk management dashboard. In the dashboard, the Data Completeness panel provides you with a good summary of missing data. Clicking on any of the KPIs takes you to the inventory, where you can manage the process of data completion.

    Data Completeness Panel of Obsolescence Risk Management Dashboard

    Data Completeness Panel of Obsolescence Risk Management Dashboard

Step-by-Step Guide