Microsoft Contract Allocation Costs

Question

Hello Apptio Community,

Our Apptio team wanted to reach out to you all for feedback/suggestions for Microsoft (MS) contracts cost allocation.

The MS contract contains many line items, including Office365. How do you allocate these costs?
Do you allocate at the line item (granular level) or do you use weighted allocations (i.e., 25% of contract cost is assigned to Office365)?

We are looking for suggestions, lessons learned and pros/cons.

Also, if you have preformed this task (with the MS contract or any other large contract)- was the level of effort (to input/maintain that detailed information) worth the outcome? Or would you recommend to use the simple weighted allocation method?

Thank you so much!- Ofelia Bogdan
#ApptioforAll

Accepted Answer

@Ofelia Bogdan
When I was an Apptio client we tried both ways for the large contracts. The line item granular detail was not worth all the effort that it took. We ended up using the line item detail to get the weighted allocations for the year and would allocate the contract based on that. Each new year we would verify or update the weights to be used for that year. May not have been exact allocations but it was close and much easier to maintain.
#ApptioforAll

Apptio for All