Managing technology investments can feel like an uphill battle with shifting business needs, rising costs, and everything getting more complicated. Add in the explosion of cloud services, the shift from a project to product-first mindset, and the need to prove business value from tech spend, and it’s easy to see why traditional financial approaches don’t cut it anymore.
That's where Technology Business Management (TBM) and Apptio, an IBM company, come in. Together, they provide organizations with the tools and methodology they need to put technology investments to work, giving every dollar a job.
Let's break down how Apptio’s suite of tools supports you, no matter where you are in your TBM journey.
Align, Design, and Roadmap: Build Your Foundation for TBM Success
1. Evaluate Your Current Technology Financial Management Maturity
Before implementing any new technology or methodology, it's critical to take a step back and understand your current state. This helps identify gaps, set priorities, and develop a roadmap to set your organization up for success with implementing TBM. Begin with a comprehensive assessment of your organization's current TBM maturity, which involves:
- Current State Analysis: Examine your existing financial management processes, tools, data sources, and reporting capabilities.
- Capability Assessment: Evaluate your organization across key dimensions, including cost transparency, demand management, portfolio planning, and financial governance.
- Stakeholder Alignment: Identify key stakeholders and understand their needs, pain points, and priorities.
- Maturity Benchmarking: Compare your organization's TBM maturity against industry standards and peers.
This assessment creates a clear picture of where you are today and identifies the most significant opportunities for improvement.
A CIO of a leading aerospace and defense company noted, "For the first time, we had an objective view of our capabilities and gaps. It was eye-opening to see how we compared to others in our industry."
2. Identify Optimization Opportunities and Quick Wins
With a clear understanding of your current state, you identify:
- Cost Optimization Opportunities: Areas where you can realize immediate savings, such as cloud resource rightsizing, license consolidation, or application rationalization.
- Process Improvement Opportunities: Inefficient workflows or manual processes that you can streamline or automate.
- Data Integration Opportunities: Disconnected systems or data sources that, when integrated, can provide greater visibility and insights.
- Quick Wins: High-value, low-effort initiatives that can deliver immediate results and build momentum.
One retail client discovered they could save over $2 million annually simply by identifying and consolidating redundant project management tools—a quick win that helped fund their broader TBM implementation.
3. Define a Roadmap for Implementation and Value Realization
Finally, develop a comprehensive roadmap that outlines:
- Phased Implementation Approach: A step-by-step plan that balances quick wins with long-term strategic objectives.
- Resource Requirements: The people, skills, and time needed for successful implementation.
- Value Realization Timeline: When and how to see results, with clear metrics to measure success.
- Risk Mitigation Strategies: Potential challenges and how to address them.
- Governance Framework: How to make decisions and track progress.
This roadmap serves as your team’s guide to putting TBM into action, ensuring all stakeholders are aligned and there is a clear path to delivering business value.
As one CFO from a top healthcare company put it, "The roadmap gave us confidence that we weren't just implementing a tool but making changes that resulted in clear, measurable business outcomes."
Implementation & Integration: Bringing Your TBM Vision to Life
With your strategy and roadmap in place, the next step is choosing the right technology to bring your TBM vision to life. That’s where IBM Apptio shines. It’s a powerful suite of tools designed to simplify technology financial management. From tracking costs and allocating budgets to measuring business value, IBM Apptio aligns your IT investments with your business goals. The platform offers visibility into spending, streamlines reporting, and provides insights to make smarter decisions.
Equally important is finding a partner who understands your unique needs and can help you implement and integrate these tools into your ecosystem. Let’s explore how you can set your organization up for success with IBM Apptio tools and how an experienced partner can help you ensure a smooth process from start to finish.
IBM Apptio Implementation for Technology Business Management
IBM Apptio is the cornerstone of comprehensive technology financial management. This tool provides businesses with clear insights into IT spending to enable smarter financial decisions and align IT investments with strategic goals. These are the essential action steps to take to ensure successful implementation:
- Platform Configuration: Set up IBM Apptio to match your organization's structure and requirements.
- Data Integration: Connect financial systems, asset management tools, and other data sources
- Cost Model Development: Create allocation models that accurately distribute costs to services and business units.
- Taxonomy Implementation: Apply the TBM taxonomy to create a common language across IT, finance, and business.
- Report Development: Build dashboards and reports that deliver insights tailored to different stakeholders.
One financial services client using IBM Apptio saw their budget forecasting accuracy improve by 90% and reduced their planning cycle time by 75%, enabling faster decision-making.
Cloudability Deployment for Cloud Financial Operations
For organizations with significant cloud investments, IBM Cloudability is indispensable. More than just a cloud cost management platform, Cloudability streamlines how businesses track, optimize, and forecast cloud spending.
However, navigating the complexities of cloud spend is tricky. That’s where partnering with an expert makes all the difference. When you work with a partner, they bring deep knowledge and hands-on expertise to help you get the most out of Cloudability:
- Multi-Cloud Cost Management: Gain visibility and control across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other providers.
- Container Cost Optimization: Access granular insights into Kubernetes and containerized application costs.
- Savings Plan and Reservation Management: Get automated recommendations for optimizing commitment-based discounts.
- Tagging Strategy Implementation: Develop and implement a comprehensive tagging approach for accurate cost allocation.
- Unit Economics Development: Create metrics that connect cloud costs to business outcomes.
For example, with a partner’s help, a technology company using Cloudability discovered over $3 million in annual cloud savings within the first month, which translates to a 21% reduction in their overall cloud spend.
Targetprocess Configuration for Portfolio and Resource Management
IBM Targetprocess is another powerful tool within the IBM Apptio suite. Targetprocess helps organizations manage their portfolios and resources more effectively, connecting strategic goals with day-to-day work and technology investments. A trusted Apptio partner will guide you through
- Portfolio Hierarchy Setup: Configure the platform to reflect your portfolio structure and work management processes.
- Resource Management Implementation: Set up capacity planning and resource allocation capabilities.
- Strategic Planning Configuration: Align investments with strategic themes and objectives.
- Workflow Optimization: Streamline portfolio management processes for greater efficiency.
- Financial Integration: Connect resource costs with portfolio investments for complete cost transparency.
A retail client that worked with a partner to implement Targetprocess. They achieved a 35% faster time-to-market and a 28% increase in developer productivity thanks to better resource allocation and portfolio alignment.
Integration with Atlassian, IBM, and Microsoft Ecosystems
No technology exists in isolation, and that’s why integrations are key. Integrations keep work flowing, deliver better insights, and improve decision-making across the enterprise. But they can be challenging, especially when businesses have complex environments with multiple systems they rely on to get work done.
Again, this is why having the right partner matters. A partner will go beyond just your basic setup, aligning tools like Jira, Azure, and Power BI with your business goals. Here’s how the experts make it happen:
- Atlassian Integration: Connect Apptio with Jira, Confluence, and other Atlassian tools for unified work and data flow.
- IBM Integration: Leverage IBM's AI capabilities and enterprise tools to enhance Apptio's functionality.
- Microsoft Integration: Connect with Azure, Teams, Power BI, and other Microsoft services for a comprehensive view of technology investments.
- Custom API Development: Build custom integrations for specialized systems or unique requirements.
- Data Synchronization: Ensure consistent and reliable data flow between systems.
For example, a healthcare organization worked with a partner to integrate Apptio tools with their Atlassian and Microsoft environments. This eliminated over 200 hours of manual data aggregation each month, freeing their team to focus on analysis rather than data collection.
Turn Your Data into Dollars for Innovation and Growth
Every organization's TBM journey is unique, but the destination is the same: technology investments that deliver measurable business value. To achieve this, you need to regularly review, refine, and evolve your practices. Apptio tools make this process easier by providing transparency, automation, and real-time insights. From optimizing cloud costs to rationalizing application portfolios, Apptio turns your financial data into dollars you can put towards innovation.
But having the right tools is only one piece of the puzzle. Collaborating with a partner to help you implement and manage these tools will ensure your technology investments fuel growth.
That’s exactly what Praecipio does with our VISTA approach, a simple and smart way to manage your tech investments.
We help you see exactly where your IT money goes, connect Apptio with your favorite tools, and align everything with your goals. When you combine Apptio tools with Praecipio’s expertise, you will cut costs and find new ways to fund innovation initiatives.
Ditch the spreadsheets and reach out to our team to learn more about how to optimize spending in real-time.
