The CIO of Wanderlust strongly feels that the seldom-used legacy Marketing application cannot be the platform to rejuvenate their online marketing business. As Chief Enterprise Architect, the CIO has entrusted you with the responsibility of finding a suitable replacement that can support all current processes and also address the issues plaguing the existing application. Which of the following should you do to conclusively shortlist possible applications to replace the existing one? Note: There are 2 correct answers to this question.
Correct Answer: A,C
Explanation Starting with the current processes will help to understand the capabilities that are needed in a new application. This will help to narrow down the field of potential applications and identify those that are most likely to meet the needs of Wanderlust. Mapping business capabilities to these processes will help to identify the gaps in the current capabilities and the areas where improvement is needed. This will help to ensure that the new application meets the needs of Wanderlust and addresses the issues plaguing the existing application. Relating Wanderlust processes to industry standard processes will help to identify applications that are already being used by other organizations. This can be a good way to ensure that the new application is compatible with other systems and that it can be easily integrated with existing systems. The other two options, Comparing the costs of those market leading online marketing applications and Understanding the features of leading online marketing applications available in the market through product demonstrations and ranking the applications in terms of features, are not as critical at this stage. The costs of the applications can be compared once the shortlist of applications has been finalized. The features of the applications can be understood through product demonstrations once the shortlist has been finalized. Therefore, the best course of action is to start with the current processes, map business capabilities to these processes, and identify which application(s) in the market can deliver such capabilities. This will help to narrow down the field of potential applications and identify those that are most likely to meet the needs of Wanderlust. Here are some of the benefits of taking a process-centric approach to selecting a new marketing application: It can help to ensure that the new application meets the needs of the business. It can help to identify applications that are already being used by other organizations. It can help to ensure that the new application is compatible with other systems and that it can be easily integrated with existing systems.
