Starting from the last January, for a new customer, I worked (together Apptio team) on Apptio Cost Transparency implementation.

This Apptio module allows to analyze the composition of IT spending and monitoring the cost in order to identify potential efficiency areas.

Before that, customer had different data source for the dataset needed to the system alimentation so, sometimes customer needed to join different dataset come from different data source, moreover the data could be not homogeneous, so it was necessary data modelling.

Customer also used Excel to build reports, so they had Static reports (without possibility of drill down) and sometimes needed to use complex excel formulas.

With Apptio Cost Transparency they now can have available of different reports OOTB with possibility of drill down and showback, they can also build custom reports in a simple and intuitive way using the appropriate section, in the end, all dataset all dataset needed to build model are now arrange in the TMB studio.

The implementation of the Cost Transparency followed different steps, in particular, I can resume that in this way:

1. Analysis of the customer flows required to build the model: First of all, to build model in right way, was important to understand the customer flow. For this reason, we had call with customer where we tried to understand the logic and the rule that need to the model configuration;
2. Model configuration on TBM Studio: After that we had collected all the information required, was time to start to configure model on TBM Studio, so, together Apptio team, I worked on the rule and logic configuration on TBM Studio;
3. Use Case OOTB identification: With model configuration, reports OOTB started to be populate. With some discovery sessions, where we illustrated and expleneted the different reports, I helped the customer to understand which reports OOTB could be more interesting and helpful for them and their needs;
4. Customization: The reports chosen had the priority for us in terms of bug resolutions, or customization (for example: changing graphic label, change the order of some report, change some KPI, add particular filter, etc.) in this scenario, with Apptio team, I directed the main customer requests about the reports OOTB in order to have reports more significant for the business;
5. Customer validation: At the end of model configuration and customization implementation, customer had to check the accuracy of the value obtained on the reports. I helped the customer to understand how value on reports were calculated in order to accelerate the validation process

About the results obtained, I would illustrate one in particular (you can view more in the attached pdf):

• OpEx Spend YTD by Cost Center Owner: The report show the IT spend (Year To Date) composition grouped by «Cost Center Owner» and the trend of IT spend grouped by «Cost Center Owner». This report could help the business because they have immediately view of which Cost Center Owner spend more money during the year. They can also view if there are some anomalous spending peaks and initiate action against these cost center owners in order to decrease the costs.

 Now that this project is end, I think that I learn a lot from this project. First of all I had the possibility to learn how configure the allocation logic, write formulas and build custom reports during the configuration sessions with Apptio team. I also learned that to have great result on Apptio, is important to have great quality about the data. For example, data should be granular enough, but a high granularity could compromise the TBM studio performance extending calculation time.

I understood that Apptio reports can really help business to have greater visibility on IT spending in order to save money and reinvest it.

Last but not the least, I understood that is very important a good communication and team working between all people that work on project to have success on it.

You can read the full case study here: ETBMA_Case_Study_Submission.pdf

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