IBM Apptio Costing and Planning

Apptio Costing is used primarily for IT budgeting and forecasting, for both departmental operating expenses and project financial categories, many of which are internally tracked and critical for our IT leaders.

Apptio Costing has made our lives much easier by allowing us to easily adjust the budget and incorporate changes on the fly, showing management the immediate effect of business changes. This capability has proven to be very useful.

Apptio Costing is deployed in my organization using a public cloud, and I purchased it through the AWS Marketplace.

Apptio Costing is a flexible system that adapts to our needs to accurately track costs.

Some of the best features Apptio Costing offers include supporting frequent updates that add new integrations, features, and tools to further enhance our marketing and capabilities.

Apptio Costing positively impacts my organization as it is a good financial accounting system that was perfectly designed for multi-user LAN environments, with improved integration with financial applications.

Apptio Costing provides IT leaders with operational details tied to the financials, indicating how much we are spending on projects versus what we think we are spending.

Improvements have been seen in procedures, particularly in our forecast system, which improved from almost four weeks to an estimated total of five days. I have seen a return on investment with Apptio Costing, as it provides a seamless way of managing our cloud costs, and having all data organized in one place facilitates significant financial transparency and planning.

One way Apptio Costing can be improved is that data linking has been a limitation for any organization when integrating with other applications like Snowflake or ERP.

The user interface should be improved to be more user-friendly, easy to navigate, and customizable.

I have been using Apptio Costing for the past five years.

Apptio Costing is very stable.

Apptio Costing is very scalable and grows with my organization's needs.

The customer support is professional and responsive; during our initial setup, they made the process quite easy and we experienced quick implementation.

Negative

I previously used IBM Planning Analytics. The reason I switched from IBM Planning Analytics to Apptio Costing is that it has more powerful visibility into IT spending compared to IBM Planning Analytics.

Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I found it to be very cost-effective and easy to set up.

My company has a business relationship with this vendor as a customer.

I have seen a return on investment with Apptio Costing, as it provides a seamless way of managing our cloud costs, and having all data organized in one place facilitates significant financial transparency and planning.

Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I found it to be very cost-effective and easy to set up.

Before choosing Apptio Costing, I evaluated other options, including Microsoft Power BI.

Apptio Costing gives comprehensive visibility into IT expenditures and excels in offering actionable insights that fuel cost optimization and enable me to make data-driven decisions easily. I would recommend Apptio Costing to others looking into using it, as its insights allow for easy data-driven decision-making. I rate Apptio Costing an eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for Apptio Costing  is to bring cost transparency to the forefront and deliver a modern, streamlined way to realize the true value of IT costs and investments by understanding consumption and unit cost and aligning them to business priorities.

It provides a single source of truth for IT costs and helps eliminate guesswork, reduce waste, and guide more informed decisions.

A quick specific example of how I use Apptio Costing  in my day-to-day work is that it has helped us improve accountability, optimize resources, and demonstrate the ROI of IT initiatives while aiming to set a solid foundation for IT financial management with deeper insights.

Apptio Costing has positively impacted my organization as this tool has been a true game-changer because the CFO of our organization trusts the budgets as he is able to see the details, avoiding arbitrary cuts to the budget and enabling us to repurpose staff from one department to another with a better handle on our vacancies against the budget.

We have taken on the IT budgets of six newly acquired locations because they know that we have the tools to adapt and can take on this work without issue or hassle, leading to more than doubling the IT budget from over $80 million to $300 million in the time we've had the product.

Apptio Costing enabled us to handle the IT budgets of those six new locations by allowing us to forecast a multi-year, multi-location budget of a $225 million project effectively in PFP and ended up significantly under budget when it was finished, thus avoiding the need to go back to the board to approve more funds for the project.

The best features that Apptio Costing offers include reducing the total cost of ownership associated with large applications in any organization while providing a business-centric view of technology with insights that help our IT organization unlock and shift resources.

It understands any business unit expense from the app, product, or service down to the general ledger and allocates costs based on consumption metrics, enabling precise resource allocation and budget optimization.

All the features of Apptio Costing are great and helpful, as it helps organizations classify, categorize, and consolidate IT spend, ensuring investments are directed to the highest value-add opportunities.

In addition to the features, cost recovery, where Apptio Costing determines the proper billing amount from each business unit using business rules, and unit rate billing, where it exposes the drivers business units can use to mitigate cost and reinvest in high-value IT activities, also stand out.

To improve Apptio Costing, a fixed asset data input needs to allow for more details such as quantities by line item, not by total amount, and I would appreciate access to more of our plans, as we have to achieve or purge prior monthly plans in order to keep the system running faster for our users.

It is worth mentioning that Apptio Costing does not have historical balance sheets.

I have been using Apptio Costing for the past five years.

Apptio Costing is very stable.

Apptio Costing's scalability is very good as it grows with my organization's needs, and I can handle it seamlessly and perfectly.

The customer support for Apptio Costing is very great as they are supportive and responsive 24/7.

I would rate the customer support on a scale of one to ten as eight out of ten.

Positive

Before switching to Apptio Costing, I previously used Microsoft Power BI , but I switched because it was not that leveraging, was a bit costly, and was not easy to use.

Apptio Costing was deployed in our organization using a public cloud.

I have seen a return on investment, as identifying ownership gaps in technology and applications has been easy while providing IT leaders with operational details tied to the financials, such as how much we are spending on projects versus what we think we are spending.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that the price is relatively cost-effective, and I do not have a problem with that.

The setting is a bit straightforward when you are able to ingest everything and learn about everything; the setting becomes simple.

Before choosing Apptio Costing, I also evaluated Workiva.

The advice I would give to others looking into using Apptio Costing is that it is suited for IT finance leaders to plan, forecast, and budget, as well as automate some monthly close tasks to save time and cost. On the other hand, it is not suited to replace accounting functions software.

My company has a business relationship with the vendor as customers.

I have additional thoughts about Apptio Costing, as we are striving for a thirty to forty percent reduction in application run cost in 2026, and if we hit this, it will be a major component to making that happen.

I would rate this review an eight out of ten overall.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services  (AWS )

What do you like best about the product?

It works very well, is lightweight and easy to integrate via APIs, extracts real-time data automatically and continuously, and offers multi-cloud support: AWS, Google Cloud, and many others. Customizable dashboards for visits and reports from specific teams. Professional services support is very helpful and responsive.

What do you dislike about the product?

High cost...
The acquisition price could improve,

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

IBM Apptio is much more than just information; I currently use this platform to access data and gain transparency, as well as to control costs and daily operations. It also provides excellent infrastructure monitoring, and our team uses it to manage clusters. Furthermore, it's a comprehensive platform that connects with ITSM tools (such as ServiceNow) to optimize performance.

What do you like best about the product?

Apptio Costing provides a great tool to use the TBM taxonomy well

What do you dislike about the product?

Some of the TBM Studio custom formula language takes a lot of time to learn and master.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Cost transparency is widely used within Apptio

What do you like best about the product?

I like the standardization provided by IBM Apptio for each forecast, which enhances comparability and version control. This feature is particularly beneficial as it allows for consistent planning and forecasting across different scenarios, making it easier to align and compare financial outcomes. The ability to handle financial information efficiently and hold accountability by cost center owners is another aspect I appreciate, as it enables a clearer understanding of financial responsibilities and projections. These elements together contribute to more structured and transparent financial management.

What do you dislike about the product?

I find the user interface of IBM Apptio not nimble, making it less responsive and somewhat cumbersome to navigate. The process to load and validate actual data into IBM Apptio is notably time-consuming, taking about 1.5 hours, which can be quite inefficient. Also, I believe the addition of an AI feature that helps analyze information would be incredibly beneficial, as it is currently lacking in this aspect, potentially limiting the depth of insights I can derive quickly.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use IBM Apptio for consolidating IT financial projections, ensuring accountability by cost center owners, and comparing various plans, improving our financial planning and forecasting.