4 Ways to Accelerate Productivity with Apptio BI

Turning data into insights — and then into action — is essential for remaining nimble in today’s rapidly evolving business climate.

Businesses have had to shift rapidly since the coronavirus pandemic began. Supply chain and labor issues have extended the economic fallout of the pandemic. Business leaders need data-driven insights to enable them to be nimble and take swift action in response to a rapidly changing business climate.

Given the importance of technology decisions on virtually every company’s future success, the ability to turn data into insights and then into action is table stakes when it comes to thinking about IT.

Apptio BI, now available to all Apptio customers, is a solution that helps end users make smarter decisions faster by enabling them to create and share the analytics that matter most to their business. Apptio BI also identifies valuable opportunities and helps convert them to reality through integrated goal tracking.

Here are four ways you can use Apptio BI to gain data-driven insights to move more quickly and make better decisions.

1. Quickly create the reports and dashboards that matter most to you

If your organization is going to rely on data-driven decisions, you need to make sure that data is accessible, accurate, and defensible. General ledgers or public cloud bills with potentially millions of rows of detail demand curation to make them consumable and actionable. Many organizations silo this work through an administrator, but channeling data analysis this way blocks technology and business leaders from getting the information they need when they need it.

Apptio BI’s simple left-hand navigation wizard and intuitive interface empower you to make your own reports and drill down to reveal details for more context and information — all without any dependency on an administrator.

The information can be presented in a variety of ways. This includes several different chart types but can also include tables. Each of these reports can drill down to lower-level details for more context and information.

Example column chart
Example column chart
Example numeric value
Example numeric value
Example report
Example report

2. Collaborate to drive consensus and inform decisions

Collecting and sharing important information is often a manual process that takes time and invites errors. Reports that are used to track metrics need frequent updates and manual distribution. Each step is a possible source of problems.

Apptio BI draws on centralized data and automates sharing of information, creating a single, defensible source of truth. This makes it easier for stakeholders to come to a consensus, collaborate, and make decisions.

Apptio BI automates the sharing of reports and can create subscriptions that prompt teams to review their reports on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

F4 Subscribe - 4 Ways to Accelerate Productivity with Apptio BI - Apptio
Example of subscriptions

3. Let the software identify the important insights

Sometimes data-driven decisions are conditioned on events, like actual costs breaching a pre-defined value. Traditionally, this relies on manually checking the metrics periodically. Apptio BI automates this process and flags these events, allowing immediate action before the next scheduled data review. Once the insight is triggered, Apptio BI automatically notifies pre-selected people and gives them prescriptive guidance on the next steps to take.

F5 Insights - 4 Ways to Accelerate Productivity with Apptio BI - Apptio

4. Turn opportunities into reality

With many wheels in motion, it can be hard to keep up with every project’s progress against identified opportunities. Plus, project managers need an easy way to track and report their most important metrics and provide the overall status of their projects.

Apptio BI eliminates the need for a separate system to track project progress against identified opportunities. Apptio BI allows you to create specific action plans; set targets, owners, and project timelines; and see a projection of time to completion. You can also add multiple KPIs to each plan so you can track the metrics that matter.

Each plan rolls up into an executive dashboard that provides a consolidated view across all projects and a summary of the status of each plan.

F6 Action Plans.png - 4 Ways to Accelerate Productivity with Apptio BI - Apptio
Action Plan Detail

Getting started

Recently launched at the annual TBM Conference, Apptio BI is available today for all Apptio customers. It is not a separate product but instead is a way of engaging with the data from all Apptio products. It is included free of charge with each Apptio product purchased. Learn more here and watch a short demo video below:

If you’re ready to take your technology decision-making to the next level of productivity, Apptio BI can be a key to your success. Read more about Apptio BI on Apptio Community.

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