Technology Business Management for Retail

For retail organizations, IT can be a driver of significant strategic advantage and operational efficiency. It is important to apply the same focus on operational efficiency that retail applies to supply chain and product management to IT itself. Technology Business Management (TBM) provides IT with the ability to deeply understand the cost of IT down to its fundamental unit drivers, calculate the total cost of IT services, drive systematic cost optimization and better communicate the value of IT across key business stakeholders.

"Apptio enables us to model the true unit costs of desktops and laptops, and both trend and project those costs on an ongoing basis. Their on-demand delivery model and built-in IT expertise enabled us to easily integrate data from various IT systems, quickly gain visibility into TCO, benchmark against industry metrics, and identify cost saving opportunities that will pay for our Apptio investment within six to nine months." John Shepard, Director of End User Client computing, Starbucks Coffee Company

Managing the Cost of IT Services

As IT organizations move to a shared services model they need to accurately track the cost of IT back to the business units. The best way to do this is by understanding the usage (business demand) for IT Services and closely managing the cost of IT Services (supply) in order to fairly allocate cost based on consumption. This requires a cost allocation system that can track unit costs, their allocation proper allocation to an IT Service and appropriation to the business units based on a metric that the business unit understands (cost per employee, cost per transaction, cost per retail product produced or delivered.)

Apptio's TBM solution provides the robust enterprise platform to track the cost of IT at a very granular level, provide the analysis and What If tools to find and justify cost reduction projects and the reporting capabilities to track long-term project success. Apptio provides five TBM applications designed to help Manage the Business of IT: IT Service Costing, Bill of IT, IT Benchmarking, IT Planning and IT Service Performance. These applications help IT and IT Finance managers systematically reduce cost, track the fully loaded cost and quality of IT Services, improve budgeting and planning processes and better communicate the value of IT to all key business stakeholders.

A Better Method for Cost Reduction

For a business with razor thin margins as Retail, any cost taken out of IT significantly affects the bottom line. Many IT organizations don’t have the tools in place to track costs down to the unit level, and how those costs relate to an IT Service or business unit. With Apptio’s TBM solution, IT managers can use data analytics to deeply understand key cost drivers and find opportunities for easy cost reduction. Domain managers (servers, data center facilities, storage, support) can better manage their costs at a grass roots level. And sophisticated What If analysis enables ROI-based project analysis and a pre-active approach to “cost savings project portfolio analysis.” This leads to a culture of Continual Cost Optimization where IT managers across the board are challenged to take cost out of their departments each year and shift more of the IT budget to Change the Business initiatives.