IT Performance Management

Aligning IT with the Business

“How is IT helping the business achieve its goals?” An answer to that question needs to comprehend both how IT can accelerate top line growth and help control costs to improve the bottom line. Historically IT has used more static, point in time metrics that often fail to comprehend the changing nature of business.

To really optimize the performance of IT, companies need automated and continuous measurement and analysis approaches that enable them to keep pace with the changing business and technological landscapes and effectively communicate the value of IT to all levels of the organization.

As a result, an IT performance management strategy must span multiple metrics with different target audiences as illustrated below.

Automating the Management of IT Performance

Many organizations who have started an initiative to manage this range of metrics and thus the performance of IT have struggled using a combination of people and spreadsheets resulting in a process that is very rigid, easily out of date, and provides limited reporting and analysis capability.

IT and finance organizations can benefit greatly from moving away from this manual spreadsheet approach towards a solution that automates IT Performance Management. The Apptio on demand offering is such a solution that encapsulates best practices and knowledge of IT to provide enterprises with transparency into the cost of their IT services and serves as a platform for tracking, analyzing, and reporting on the broader set of performance metrics critical to aligning IT with the business.

With Apptio IT organizations can:

• Enhance collaboration between Finance & IT to increase visibility into the costs, utilization and operations of IT services.
• Benefit from rich reporting and powerful “What If” analysis to identify cost savings, improve governance and make better IT decisions.
• Easily create a “Bill of IT”, to more effectively communicate the value of IT to the business and begin proactively managing demand.

Aligning IT with the Business at HomeStreet Bank

HomeStreet Bank traditionally had been more reactive within their IT organization but as their financial asset base continued to grow and they expanded both their business and consumer banking they realized there was a need to take a more strategic view on IT. A new CIO was appointed to provide more strategic leadership for IT and develop a clear mapping between the activities and spend within IT and the key services that they provided to the business.

To automate this IT performance management initiative, Homestreet adopted the Apptio on demand service offering. The quickly imported key data sets across their IT systems to develop an understanding of where costs were flowing in IT and of the true costs of their core IT services. With this foundation of cost transparency in place they are now moving to leverage the Apptio on demand offering to automate the reporting and analysis of a broader set of performance metrics across availability, support, security, and operations.

Benefits achieved:

• Reduced time and effort required to develop and maintain an accurate cost model for all IT services
• Automated measurement and analysis of a broader set of key IT metrics to improve their ability to manage the performance and communicate the business value of IT
• Rapid time to value with minimal upfront investment required for the Apptio on demand offering

Getting Started with IT Cost Transparency

Companies that have implemented IT performance solutions are leading the industry in IT efficiency metrics and in leveraging IT for business competitive advantage. To learn how IT Cost Transparency provides a solid foundation for a broader IT Performance Management Strategy, download Howard Rubin’s whitepaper. To get started today, signup for a Free Trial. Or read more about the functionality delivered with Apptio’s on demand offering from our solution whitepaper, Automating IT Cost Transparency.