4 Challenges & Best Practices of Application Management in 2024

Modern business environments expand fast and force businesses to adopt or develop many applications, software, ERP, and databases. However, managing all these tools and software is not an easy task. 

The application release process includes multiple steps such as developing, testing and releasing, etc. Besides, each application requires consistent updates, maintenance, and upgrades as well as integrations with disparate applications. In a large business, it may cause delays in business processes and loss of resources.

Automation for the application management process can help to lighten the workload off the shoulders of IT teams and help them focus on more critical areas. It can orchestrate complex application management processes across diverse IT environments.

Adopting application management automation solutions can improve the performance of applications and it may have an impact on the overall efficiency and productivity of businesses. In this article, we will explore 5 challenges that companies face in the application management process and their solutions.

What is application management automation?

Application management automation is the process of managing all applications, tools, and databases that exist in a business environment automatically. 

The application management process starts with deciding whether an application should be purchased from the outside or be developed in-house. 

If it is decided to develop in-house, it comprises processes such as developing, testing, deployment, releasing, and improving applications such as version checks and quality tests.

Automation helps IT teams eliminate manual workloads, increase agility and alleviate complex processes in the application release lifecycle. 

Below are some of the tasks in application management that are highly appropriate for automation:

• Monitoring of Service Level Agreements (SLA)s,
• Application development and testing,
• The incident resolution such as password resetting for applications and software.

What are the challenges of manual application management, & their solutions?

1. Poor communication across different teams 

Challenge: The very first challenge in the application management process is poor collaboration and communication between different teams. The siloed structure of businesses prevents collaboration between the teams. Often, teams struggle with tracking activities such as who did what changes. 

Solution: Increased collaboration with the orchestration of different processes through application management automation software. The software helps teams to coordinate processes seamlessly with other teams. 

Another way to improve collaboration is by sharing best practices between teams and getting recorded learning for the future. This way, teams can learn from best practices and improve their performances as well as alleviate friction between teams.

2. Manual version control is time-consuming

Challenge: Maintenance of existing applications and software is critical for guaranteed performance. The latest versions of applications often prevent bugs better and checking the latest version requires extensive manual efforts. 

Solution: Automated application management can help solve this problem. Instead of manually checking the latest versions and updates for each application, the automated tracking system detects and notifies users about them. This way, users do not face issues such as low performance or interruptions caused by using old versions. 

3. Manual steps cause many errors and delays

Challenge: The application management process has a lot of manual workloads. These range from fixing bugs to manual testing and application deployment and to updating licenses. Such types of repetitive, manual tasks can undermine the efficiency of business processes and end up in delays.

Solution: Automated application management brings a solution to manual efforts. By using application management automation software, businesses can automate and run processes. As manual tasks are automated, errors in the process can be significantly decreased. A good example of manual tasks can be the automation of SLAs. The software monitors the criteria and notifies if any breaches occur.

4. Lack of project progress visibility

Challenge: One of the biggest problems faced in application management is the lack of visibility across the application release and management. For example, users and developers struggle to find out the progress of the in-house built applications and this creates ambiguity about the project completion and delivery time. 

Solution: Automated application management solution helps developers and business users have broader insights on project progress. As it demonstrates the phases of the application release process, the progress can be monitored in real-time. This way, the business eliminates the risks of breaching deadlines.

Further Reading

To learn more about finance automation, feel free to read our articles:

• 8 Ways Application Release Orchestration Boosts DevOps
• 8 Ways WLA Tools Improve IT and Business Processes
• How to Improve Business Processes via Workflow Orchestration

If you are looking for automation tools, you can visit our hub for the automation software landscape.

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