IBM Apptio Costing

The main use case for Apptio Costing is performing recharge for different stakeholders, providing transparency for different cost components such as labor, manpower, facilities, and indirect costs including IT and training. I track time for each contractor, internal laborers, and external laborers.

I manage recharge processes with Apptio Costing, which helped me connect to different source systems, including all financial source systems that my organization uses. In my case, this includes SAP and other ERP tools to get required information such as payroll, headcount details, and time tracking devices from Workday hierarchies and organizational structures. All required source systems are automated, and the data extraction part is automated. Apptio helps to transform data related to business needs, and after transformation, I leverage existing reports, making adjustments as needed to satisfy executive decisions. Apptio Costing helps the organization provide data-driven decisions for budgeting and forecasting.

Apart from my usage of Apptio Costing, I also leverage the role-level security feature available within it to restrict data at different levels. For example, one of the cost center owners wants to see only dedicated cost center details, which can be redacted and easily achieved by the role-level security option. Additionally, the planning module within Apptio helped me assist the organization in understanding third-party costs and expenses. Pushing data from planning to Cost Transparency was seamless. It actually helped to transform data from planning to the Cost Transparency module, where I perform all transformations within the module itself.

Apptio Costing positively impacts my organization by helping executives make decisions faster. Since decisions are completely based on data, they trust Apptio, which leads to trusting the results that help stakeholders continue investments and understand the total cost of ownership for each application, project, or service within the organization.

Apptio helped me understand the current state of each application within the organization. In my past experience, I had very poor data in applications, and the organization struggled to understand live applications, decommissioned applications, and how much was being spent on each, leading to many cost-related questions. By fetching data from ServiceNow, I processed and transformed it to give visibility of each application's current state. This exercise helped the organization understand the total cost of ownership for every application owned by different stakeholders, supporting executive decisions about spending optimally.

One of the best features Apptio Costing offers is cost transparency, which helps the organization understand the flow of each dollar and how to optimize that cost. For example, if software cost is too high compared to expectations, Apptio helps me understand where the cost is coming from, where it is going, and which software is acquiring more cost. This insight helps optimize costs for a better future, resulting in data-driven decisions for better forecasting and budgeting for the next year.

More specifically, the data extraction part within Apptio Costing is straightforward, and the data connector feature helped everyone connect to different source systems available within the organization. For example, ServiceNow, which is one of the CMDB repositories used by most organizations and holds information related to each application, can be automated. The data extraction part is automated through different types of connectors readily available, eliminating the need to depend on multiple tools. In my previous experience, I used three different tools for one project, which included .NET for the front end, IBM InfoSphere DataStage for staging the data, and Cognos for reporting. With Apptio Costing, all three ETL processes can be done with one license, allowing me to avoid dependence on multiple vendors and save costs.

Apptio Costing has some flaws; I cannot say it is perfect. It has some dependency in terms of time-consuming processes, and at times I need to wait for a set of calculations to complete, which falls on the TBM's shoulders to design the configuration to reduce calculation time. There are multiple measures, and Apptio's product developers propose options to reduce stage calculation time that I as a TBM need to follow. For example, I should avoid nested statements and more than one lookup in a single formula step during configuration. If data quality is poor, I face limitations, and the wait time is a drawback identified since IBM's acquisition of Apptio. They are addressing it based on feedback from clients using Apptio Costing.

As of today, the AI capabilities within Apptio Costing are very limited. They have a roadmap and plan to enhance AI capabilities by the end of 2027. Recently, they initiated a chatbot using natural language processing options, which allows users to interact with Apptio Costing directly without depending on reports, making it easier to have one-to-one conversations. This is a good feature that IBM has recently implemented within the Cost Transparency module, and I am still expecting more from them.

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

Apptio Costing is stable.

On a scale of ten, I can give Apptio Costing a nine in terms of scalability metrics.

Customer support for Apptio is tremendous, as they operate around the clock globally. Response times are quick, and they keep me informed about the status of requests, whether for how-tos or issues. Within two hours or less, I get an ETA, and I am updated about the progress, ensuring flawless communication without issues taking more than a week, even for critical matters.

On a scale of one to ten, I can rate customer support a nine.

I did not previously use a different solution; I started my career with Apptio Costing and began using it from day one when I got the opportunity, as I was in a completely different domain before that.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is moderate. As mentioned earlier, if budget is above a specific threshold, I recommend Apptio Costing as one of the best ITFM tools to help organizations understand actuals, budgets, forecasts, and planning. However, the license cost is higher compared to other tools, but if quality is desired, one must be willing to spend more; cheap solutions yield cheap responses.

I performed a case study between Nicus and Apptio Costing, and I shared the case study results with the client, who chose to proceed with Apptio Costing. There were pros and cons between the tools.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Apptio Costing an eight point five, or just an eight.

I give it an eight because it has both pros and cons. It is one of the leading tools, and the license cost is higher compared to budgets. If the overall budget is more than one hundred million, I propose using Apptio Costing; if not, it is better to seek other cheaper tools that can perform similar operations. If one wants to understand the complete ITFM process, some other tools such as Nicus or Yarkin are readily available, for example, TBMo, which are cheaper and suitable if the overall budget is less than one hundred million.

My advice to others looking into using Apptio Costing is to understand the basics of any tool. I suggest having some basic knowledge of what Apptio Costing is, what it does, and how to leverage it to achieve business requirements. Understanding the tool before asking questions is key, so that is what I personally suggest to anyone trying to use it for the first time.

Apptio Costing's main use case for our customers is FinOps, for example, for those using Azure. The idea is to help them better monitor any costs related to cloud consumption and see everything related to cloud shadow IT while reflecting all invoices and explaining FinOps best practices.

I start by providing a FinOps discovery workshop and then, depending on the annual consumption, I decide whether it would make sense for that specific customer to offer them managed services. If they agree, then I use Apptio Costing for it. As a specific use case, when a customer has at least 100K euros in annual consumption, I use Apptio Costing.

When a large organization looks to improve transparency and control over their IT cost, which includes financial and operational data, I notice that the organization lacks a consolidated view of how IT spending is allocated across infrastructure, applications, services, business units, and end users. By using Apptio Costing, the organization establishes a structured IT cost model by consolidating data from finance, procurement, cloud platform, infrastructure, application, and organizational sources. The customer was able to allocate IT costs to the appropriate services, applications, business units, and cost centers by using defined allocation rules and cost drivers. Additionally, they understood the complete cost structure of IT services from the underlying infrastructure and software costs to shared services and operational resources. By the end, they were able to compare actual spending against budget and forecast, while also identifying areas where costs were increasing unexpectedly.

Apptio Costing offers many good features. One of the main ones is having a single pane, a unique dashboard where you see everything related to cloud consumption. Another important one that I have seen is IT Cost Modeling, because you can map financial data into IT services and applications. I would also say that Cost Allocation is essential to distribute shared IT costs using allocation rules and consumption drivers.

Beyond cost modeling and allocation, I would highlight a few features that make Apptio Costing particularly useful. You have application and service total cost of ownership, which allows you to calculate the full cost of an application or IT service, including infrastructure, software, labor, and shared costs. You also have variance analysis, which helps compare actual, budget, and forecast and understand what drives the difference.

Apptio Costing has positively impacted our organization mainly by improving transparency around IT spending, giving us a much clearer understanding of where our IT costs come from, how they are allocated, and which application services or business units are driving those costs.

I have seen it improve collaboration between IT and finance because both departments now have a common cost model and more consistent data to support discussions and decisions. Apptio Costing has helped us by saving time, improving decision-making, automating cost allocation, and consolidating financial and operational data into a single model. I notice that we spend less time manually collecting, reconciling, and analyzing data from different sources.

I see some areas where Apptio Costing could be improved. For the initial setup and configuration, while the platform is very powerful, building and maintaining a complex cost model always requires significant expertise and a good understanding of the underlying data. I think we can bring more from the user experience because the solution is quite intuitive for occasional users, but the configuration could be made much simpler.

Regarding integration, data integration could also be made easier with more out-of-the-box connectors and simpler ways to map and validate data from ERP, cloud, HR, or IT management systems.

I have been using Apptio Costing for three years.

Apptio Costing is quite stable.

Our experience with Apptio Costing has been positive because the platform is suited to our large and complex enterprise environment. As the organization grows, the cost model can also evolve by adding new data sources, allocation rules, and reporting requirements, making it one of its strengths.

Customer support is great from the vendor side. We are our own partner for that product, and they are very responsive, knowledgeable, and know how to deal with technical questions or configuration-related issues.

I would rate customer support as an eight out of ten. I hesitate between eight or nine, but I keep it at eight because there is still some room for improvement in the response time and handling of more complex cases.

As far as I recall, we did not have an equivalent dedicated technology business management and FinOps solution previously. It was more through Excel and financial reports, which made it quite hard to manage.

The mechanism of setting up Apptio Costing is quite approachable. The hardest part is usually designing a cost model that the business trusts. Apptio always provides out-of-the-box cost transparency components, default allocation, data relationships, and standard reports. The typical implementation flow includes finance data, which gives you the cost pool, IT towers, services, and applications, leading to the business units.

We have seen a positive return on investment. Although I cannot share specific financial figures, the return on investment comes mainly from improved IT cost transparency, reduced manual effort in financial analysis and cost allocation, faster reporting, and better identification of optimization opportunities. We have also improved our decision-making process by giving IT and finance a common view of application, infrastructure, and service costs.

It is a great experience regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing. Apptio's sales team was amazing with us, very straightforward and concise with all details. It is quite reasonable for an enterprise-grade solution, although it can represent a significant investment. The license cost is only one part of the overall cost, but organizations also need to consider initial implementation efforts, including data integration, cost model design, configuration, testing, and potential external consulting services, which we relied on. All of this setup cost can be significant but was quite manageable.

We evaluated Cloudtamer, which is a US startup, before choosing Apptio Costing.

I would tell others looking into using Apptio Costing to initially prepare their data and define the right objectives before implementing it. The technology is very powerful, but the quality of the results depends heavily on the quality of financial and operational data and having clearly defined allocation rules.

The governance and security aspects of Apptio Costing are great. The platform is quite well monitored for data and security, especially with the connectors handling sensitive financial and IT data. There is the ability to control access based on user roles and responsibilities, and I would like to see continued improvement around security monitoring, auditability, and data governance.

Apptio Costing's AI capabilities are useful, but I would not rely on the output without validation because the accuracy and reliability depend heavily on the quality, completeness, and structure of the underlying data. I gave this review an overall rating of eight out of ten.