Business process and applications professionals face a barrage of requests to deploy new functionality, reduce IT costs, and meet vendor-imposed upgrade deadlines. Typical projects include instance consolidation, software upgrades, business process outsourcing (BPO), and third-party maintenance migration. But these projects often occur piecemeal, leading to organizational fatigue, expensive rework, and lost Total Economic Impact™ (TEI). As the industry moves to service-oriented architecture (SOA) and the beginning of the next upgrade cycle, business process and applications professionals should take advantage of this unique opportunity to plan strategically and initiate a long-term applications strategy.