The business landscape is constantly changing, never more so than after our collective experience over the last four to five years. Therefore, it is more important than ever to understand the potential return on investment (ROI) of any project or initiative you are considering. What about the ROI you can expect from automated application packaging and management?
At Access IT Automation, we have extensive experience working on application packaging and management projects, including Windows 11, Windows 365, and virtual desktop initiatives. This includes projects for SMEs as well as large corporations with tens of thousands of users and a similar number of apps.
We have used that experience to create an example of the measurable savings you can make by automating application packaging and management in your organisation. Let’s start by looking at the processes and time required for an application engineer to manually package, test, publish, and deploy an app.
Manual Packaging Processes – Approximate Time Per App
- Discovery to create the necessary packaging documentation – 4 hours.
- Packaging in the required format (MSI, MSIX, app attach, etc) – 4 hours.
- Quality testing, including quality assurance and smoke testing – 4 hours.
- UAT (user acceptance) testing – 8 hours.
- Publishing the application to SCCM and Intune – 1 hour.
- Deployment (creating the application deployment object) – 1 hour.
- VM (virtual machine) management – 1 hour.
- Communication throughout the process between engineers, users, and others – 1 hour.
The total time per app for the above manual processes is 24 hours.
How does that compare with automated application packaging and management?
Automated Packaging Processes – Approximate Time Per App
- Discovery – 15 minutes
- Packaging – 15 minutes
- Quality testing – 10 minutes
- UAT – 1 hour
- Publishing – 5 minutes
- Deployment – 5 minutes
- VM management – 5 minutes
- Communication – 5 minutes
The total time for the automated processes outlined above is two hours per app.
That equates to 92% less time per application in your organisation. Plus, the quality of the process is not compromised in any way through automation. In fact, audit and control requirements are likely to be enhanced through automation rather than diminished.
The Savings
When you think about the number of applications in your organisation that have to be packaged, tested, and published, you can see the resource savings are substantial given it can potentially take 92 percent less time per application to complete the required processes.
The exact savings you will achieve will depend on your organisation and the resources you have available, especially those resources that are responsible for application packaging and management. The number and types of applications you depend on are also important, as is the nature of your current IT infrastructure.
That said, we can still put some estimates in place.
For example, a typical application management team could consist of 20 application engineers who are responsible for discovery, packaging, testing, and deployment. In this scenario, a transition to automated application packaging and management would result in resource savings of up to $600k a year.
An organisation in this situation will also see packaging output increase by 12 times, improving user experience and productivity while also helping with the delivery of major IT projects.
We have also seen organisations reduce the headcount of their application packaging and management team by 25 percent and sometimes a lot more. In these situations, experienced and skilled engineers are often redeployed to other areas of the business and technology function, including tasks that are more value-adding than the repetitive and time-consuming processes involved in application packaging and management.
Automating Application Packaging and Management with Access Capture
Access Capture, Access IT Automation’s automated application packaging and management product, has helped customers achieve the savings and efficiency gains outlined in this blog. We can deliver the same for your organisation.
Furthermore, you don’t have to compromise on functionality or application strategy when you use Access Capture, as the platform is highly flexible and adaptable to requirements. For example, you will have complete package and deployment object flexibility, so you can use Access Capture with whatever packaging and deployment strategy you have selected.
The cost savings, efficiency improvements, and productivity gains are available from day one of your automated application packaging and management journey. To start taking advantage of those benefits, get in touch with us at Access IT Automation today.
