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“We were several IT departments that were consolidating costs into Finance teams and so on. Since adopting Apptio, we now have the same taxonomy, the same rules, and the same language, which really helped us establish an IT Finance community.”
As a large financial institution, technology evolution is unavoidable. Virtualization, AI, cloud, and other advanced technologies are required to support modern banking, resulting in a technology landscape that is complex and continuously changing.
For the Finance team at a top-tier European bank, this complexity created an overwhelming challenge. Many different systems provide data needed for accurately managing technology costs, and the team had to ensure the data being fed into their cost model was reliable, auditable, and traceable to the source systems—a task that was incredibly difficult to do using spreadsheets.
“The increased complexity made it clear to us that the days of using worksheets and Excel files to consolidate our data and connect all the dots were about to end,” said the IT Cost Efficiency and Sustainability Director at the bank.
To replace their spreadsheet-driven process, the company implemented IBM Apptio Costing and Planning. Apptio was selected because it is the industry-leading solution that enabled the company to consolidate disparate data sources into a single platform and then glean valuable, actionable insights about their tech investments from Apptio’s vast analysis and custom reporting capabilities, allowing company leaders to make critical decisions backed by defensible data.
Apptio Costing and Planning has helped the bank establish a strong Technology Business Management platform. This has helped simplify and enhance their processes and also form the basis for a more effective and collaborative IT Finance community across the company.
“We were several IT departments that were consolidating costs into Finance teams and so on,” said the IT Cost Efficiency and Sustainability Director. “Since adopting Apptio, we now have the same taxonomy, the same rules, and the same language, which really helped us establish an IT Finance community.”
The Head of TBM at the bank added, “Apptio gave us the same language—the same understanding of our requests from financial teams and the needs of IT management teams—and clear reports with granular detail. This was one of our main achievements.”
Before implementing Apptio, everything was managed in Excel files and categorized using accounting information. Doing a technology budget required many spreadsheets and seemingly endless emails between teams to address changes and nuances. Forming a community, with a standard language for tech costs and a centralized platform in Apptio, makes analysis, optimizing spend, budgeting, and forecasting much easier.
“Apptio provides a single view, a clear view of our figures, and that saves us time and enables us to do quality analysis faster,” said the customer. “It gives us a single source of truth.”
Another significant outcome of implementing Apptio has been the insights the solution has delivered through its custom reporting capability—a self-service feature that enables users to generate many different views and combinations of their data based on their business needs.
“This allows us to create our own insights,” the customer said. “For example, we can analyze budget variance on a monthly basis through a custom dashboard and categorize these variances into budget, accounting, price, volumes, exchange rates, and so on. This has helped us identify cost-saving opportunities as well as redirect resources to the projects or initiatives that need funding.”
There are several Apptio projects the team plans to tackle soon. One is automating all recurrent reporting in Apptio to eliminate all manual work and ensure conformity with standard templates. Another is a little longer term but high on the list of priorities. This project will focus on increasing the business value of technology by reaching out to the business side to develop the cost per product of each business line, providing business insight on unit economics and enabling leaders to align investments with key business priorities.
When asked to share any advice they had for others starting out on the TBM journey, the customer spoke of the importance of collaboration and teaming.
“Management support and involvement are key,” the customer said. “Not just during tool selection but in day-to-day activity. Bring end users to the table early to identify their [reporting] needs and to involve them. This will make creating the reports they need as simple as possible.”
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