Technology Business Management

Clear understanding of the IT costs is a key step

I was part of a large organization with a huge IT infrastructure footprint.  

One of the valuable experiences I learned while performing the Technonology Business Management role there is that the Business Units aren't always sure what they're' getting out of IT or what levers they could use to manage their technology spend.   The main reason was the primary method for communicating the value of IT was often through a deck of Powerpoints replete with copy-and-pasted spreadsheets, powered by extracts from SAP, Ariba, and other "sub-ledgers" that showed vague buckets of technology expense against financial accounts, cost centre, and other seemingly unclear categories instead of the applications and services the Business rely on and can assign value to.

We adopted Apptio to help us address this challenge.

Apptio TBM Solutions

Apptio's IT Planning module helped us manage our IT budget and forecast much easier than the Excel-based tool we were accustomed to.   The module was very intuitive and we immediately adopted the built-in KPIs such as Forecast vs Plan and Forecast vs Target -- by CIO, By Cost Centre Group, By Accounts, and so on.   These metrics exposed the variances before it gets out of hand, and allowed us to ask the often difficult questions:   "are we investing enough on technology innovation? or are we spending enough to keep the lights on?"   The CIOs are often asked to help grow the business, but in reality they spend more on running the lights on and service requests.   The KPIs shed light on the balance between lights on and growth.  

Apptio's IT Benchmarking provided us a way to compare our spend against peers in the industry.   It helped us justify the IT budgets and make smart decisions about alternatives such as outsourcing.   It also gave us confidence whether we are efficient with the way we distribute our spend.

Apptio's Cost Transparency module gave us a huge lift in showing the Business their technology consumption in order to help them make informed decision.   For example, by understanding the Total Cost of Ownership of an application they can decide whether to buy or build it on their own.  

We later complemented Apptio's out-of-the box reporting with auto-generated PDFs and Tableau-powered portfolio of interactive dashboards to highlight technology consumption and trends, which are important information for the senior leaders in the board room.