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TBM Modeling: Building a Foundation for Technology Cost Transparency

TBM modeling is the core process through which cost, consumption, and value data are transformed into insights that inform decisions. For TBM administrators, modeling is both a technical discipline and an evolving craft—requiring mastery of data integration, taxonomy structures, cost allocation strategies, and stakeholder collaboration.

This page introduces the fundamentals of TBM modeling and links to deep-dive pages on specific topics, helping you build, maintain, and evolve high-value TBM models.

Getting Started: Modeling in Early-Stage TBM Adoption

In the early phases of TBM adoption, modeling focuses on creating an initial view of IT cost transparency. This includes:

  • Mapping high-confidence cost data to standard TBM Cost Pools
  • Associating costs to Resource Towers using basic rules or cost centers
  • Applying fixed-percentage allocations where precision data is unavailable
  • Building initial dashboards to validate structure and foster buy-in

Learn more about modeling in context on the TBM Adoption page.

Core Topics in TBM Modeling

Effective modeling connects cost and operational data to standardized TBM categories. Explore key modeling disciplines:

  • Data for TBM Modeling: Understand the sources and structures required to fuel your model.
  • Mapping Financial Data to Cost Pools: Ensure financial transactions are categorized into the correct IT cost classifications.
  • Mapping Budget to Cost Pools: Use TBM to help align your budget and actuals.
  • Mapping Resource Towers: Associate infrastructure and staff costs to their corresponding Resource Towers.
  • Mapping Solutions: Align costs to the Technology Solutions they support to enable TCO and showback.
  • Cost Allocation Methods: Distribute indirect costs fairly and transparently across services and Solutions.
  • KPIs & Metrics: Measure the effectiveness and maturity of your model.
  • Reporting: Visualize and communicate insights through dashboards, reports, and scorecards.
  • Data Quality & Fallout: Address errors and inconsistencies that may undermine your model’s credibility.
  • Total Cost of Ownership: Track the full cost to deliver and support each Solution.
  • Showback & Chargeback: Provide business units with actionable views of their technology consumption and costs.

Evolving and Expanding Your TBM Model

As TBM maturity increases, so does modeling complexity. Practitioners must:

  • Replace static mappings with dynamic, data-driven allocation methods
  • Expand Solution mapping beyond core IT to include shared platforms and business capabilities
  • Refine cost inputs through better tagging, normalization, and governance
  • Add operational metrics, budget/forecast data, and project costs
  • Develop modular dashboards for Finance, Delivery, and Business audiences

Upgrading Your Model with TBM Taxonomy Version 5.0

If you’re migrating from a prior version of the TBM Taxonomy, you’ll need to:

  • Review the new Resource Tower structure and revised Cost Pools
  • Re-map existing data sets to align with the updated taxonomy
  • Communicate changes clearly to stakeholders and end-users

Visit the TBM Taxonomy v5.0 Migration Guide to get step-by-step instructions.

Managing and Sustaining Your TBM Model

Ongoing TBM modeling success depends on maintaining:

  • Strong data governance processes
  • Cross-functional alignment with Finance, HR, and delivery teams
  • Periodic audits to validate allocation logic and assumptions
  • A roadmap for maturing accuracy and relevance over time

As your organization evolves, your TBM model must evolve with it. Whether you’re building a model for the first time or scaling a mature practice, the tools and guidance on this page will help you succeed.

Explore each topic in detail to advance your TBM modeling capabilities and drive better decisions across the enterprise.

Join the TBM community: where innovators and leaders converge

The TBM Council is your gateway to a treasure trove of knowledge: think cutting-edge research papers, insightful case studies, and vibrant community forums where you can exchange ideas, tackle challenges, and celebrate successes with fellow practitioners.

We’re calling on organizations and forward-thinking individuals to dive into the TBM community. Participate in our events, engage in our discussions, and tap into a vast reservoir of knowledge. This isn’t just about networking; it’s about contributing to and benefiting from the collective wisdom in navigating the dynamic world of cloud computing.

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Red Hat built the world’s largest enterprise open-source software company, growing into a multi-billion-dollar firm before being acquired by IBM Corp. This open-source heritage often placed the value of technology in the product and engineering realm rather than with IT. Thus, not surprisingly, Red Hat’s TBM journey started with a new CFO wanting to know why IT costs were so high. Through the TBM framework and discipline, Red Hat IT successfully delivered cost transparency of all IT spend and then became a model for technology spend planning and forecasting. The IT team added the FinOps discipline to its capabilities and is now managing a broad hybrid cloud portfolio. However, TBM and FinOps have remained in the realm of IT only, until now. Red Hat’s current CIO, Jim Palermo, is driving TBM, FinOps, and Enterprise Agile Management across the company based on IT’s success and through the lens of value stream management. in this session, Jim will walk through Red Hat’s TBM journey and its current transformation to an operational business architecture framework built on value streams aligned to business outcomes.

Speaker:

  • Jim Palermo, VP, CIO, Red Hat

When the team at Tenet Healthcare made the decision to move towards a model that provided more accurate financial transparency, they looked to TBM practices and solutions. Join Paola Arbour, EVP and CIO at Tenet healthcare as she answers the question “why TBM?”, including what Tenet was trying to solve with the TBM Taxonomy, the effectiveness of their KPIs, and how building support and momentum across the entire company was critical to their successful TBM adoption. In this session, Paola will also share how Tenet continues to evolve their use of TBM, including for mergers, acquisitions, and divestiture activity, as well as segmenting cost structures.

Speaker:

  • Paola Arbour, EVP & CIO, Tenet Healthcare

Data driven decision making has been a key to longevity and delivering best in class service to State Farm’s customers over the past 100 years. Recently, State Farm decided to use a managed services company for the day-to-day support of their Infrastructure Services. Today’s technology leaders need to be able to make real-time, informed decisions to help ensure technology investments are meeting their customer’s needs, while continuing to support company long-term goals. Ashley Pettit, SVP & CIO at State Farm, will be joined by Randy McBeath, Enterprise Technology Executive, and Andy Moore, Technology Director, and together they will share how TBM aided in State Farm’s analysis and decision to move to a managed service provider.

Speakers:

  • Ashley Pettit, SVP & CIO, State Farm Insurance
  • Andy Moore, Technology Director, State Farm Insurance
  • Randy McBeath, Enterprise Technology Executive, State Farm Insurance

There is fast evolution occurring in the overall technology spend and value management market, with the advancements of cloud, Kubernetes, AI/ML, and other innovations. At the same time, we are seeing vast changes in the roles of the CIO, CFO, and business/digital leadership. In addition, TBM is intersecting with other disciplines and frameworks, such as Cloud FinOps, Agile engineering, and portfolio resource management. How is this affecting the TBM discipline, the TBM Council, and Apptio? For one, TBM is moving down market, becoming more accessible to all sizes and maturity of organizations, with easier ways to get started and a faster time to value. Cloud FinOps, meanwhile, is advancing and adding capabilities previously in TBM to the cloud cost management space. Join Apptio CEO Sunny Gupta as he explores the evolving TBM landscape and how he believes it will bring even greater opportunity and value to organizations worldwide.

Speaker:

  • Sunny Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO, Apptio

In today’s challenging economic times it is critical that CFOs, CIOs, and CTOs speak the same language when it comes to the value of technology spend. Having a single source of truth that everyone can feel confident in, track progress continuously throughout the year with shared insights, and analyzing options for resourcing and funding in order to reduce waste is where TBM deepens their partnership. In this discussion, join members of the TBM Council Board of Directors as they discuss the pivotal conversations and steps taken to collectively adopt TBM practices across the organization, including responding to naysayers and gaining allies.

Panelists:

  • George Maddaloni, EVP, CTO, Operations, Mastercard
  • Laura Walsh, CIO, Smithfield Foods
  • RJ Hazra, SVP & CFO, Technology & Security, Equifax
  • Moderated by Chad Doiran, Managing Director, Tech. Strategy & Advisory, Accenture

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Speakers:

  • Fumbi Chima, Chief Technology & Transformation Officer, BECU
  • Larry Blasko, President, Field Operations, Apptio

Technology leaders have a unique opportunity to transform their organizations into environmental champions with sustainable business practices. In this session, Neal Ramasamy, CIO at Cognizant and Phil Alfano, Field CTO at Apptio will share how TBM can be leveraged to achieve comprehensive visibility into real-time data-driven tracking to ensure company goals and actions are being met to achieve a sustainable future.

Speakers:

  • Neal Ramasamy, CIO, Cognizant
  • Phil Alfano, Field CTO, Apptio

For McGraw Hill, having a transparent framework that drives smart investment strategies and a common language across this 135-year-old company is critical. Known as one of the “big three” education publishers, McGraw Hill must stay ahead of their competitors with innovation and value delivery. Join Yuliya Oberman, Finance Director for McGraw Hill Education and Eileen Wade, General Manager of the TBM Council as they discuss how TBM is essential to McGraw Hill’s enterprise resource strategies and digital transformation journey.

Speakers:

  • Yuliya Oberman, Finance Director, McGraw Hill Education
  • Eileen Wade, General Manager, TBM Council

In this fireside chat, Matt Yanchyshyn, GM, AWS Marketplace & Partner Engineer at AWS will join incoming General Manager of the TBM Council, Jack Bischof, for a discussion on best practices for building successful TBM practices focused on cloud financial management. Including a deep dive into the nuances, learnings, and milestones that the world’s 9th largest insurance company is achieving on their Cloud FinOps journey.

Speakers:

  • Matt Yanchyshyn, GM, AWS Marketplace & Partner Engineering, AWS
  • Jack Bischof, Incoming General Manager, TBM Council

Hear from Ajay Patel, COO at Apptio and Zubin Irani, CEO at Cprime as they discuss how the intersection of TBM and enterprise agile planning is a critical strategy for organizations to adopt if they want to drive business growth more efficiently, in real-time, and keep up with the speed of change that today’s organizations face.

Speakers:

  • Ajay Patel, COO, Apptio
  • Zubin Irani, CEO, Cprime

Join Origin Energy’s Adrian Thivy, GM, Enterprise Technology Services, as he shares how TBM is creating complete confidence in their spend-to-value ratios across IT and the broader company, allowing a rapid response to the market forces driving significant pressure on the “cost to serve” customers. A finalist for the 2022 TBM Council Award for TBM Pacesetter, hear how their TBM practice was built in record time, including lessons learned as they developed business capabilities and managed a significant cloud migration and transformation.  

Session topics will include:  

  • Establishing a clear purpose and common goals that drive cross-functional understanding
  • Utilizing an adaptative governance framework to ensure accountability across all stakeholders 
  • Leveraging TBM and ServiceNow CSDM to deliver a transparent, flexible, and sustainable model in a shorter time frame
  • How bespoke logic has dramatically improved transparency of cost more than 90%


Presented by:

  • Adrian Thivy, GM, Enterprise Technology Services, Origin Energy 

Many organizations aspire for a cloud-native posture, however few have the time, resources and budget to transform into 100% public cloud operations. Equifax has broken through those barriers to modernize its infrastructure globally — driving faster innovation for customers, more business agility, and stronger cybersecurity. Hear from Manav Doshi, GM, Technology Solutions on how the Equifax team is rebuilding a century-old company, with a real-time approach to optimizing cost and revenue growth in the cloud.

 

Presented by:

  • Manav Doshi, GM, Technology Solutions, Equifax 

Transport for NSW is the winner of the 2022 TBM Council Award for TBM Pacesetter, which recognizes significant progress and value with TBM in a relatively short period of time. In this session, hear how the merger of Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) and Transport for New South Wales resulted in the fastest consolidation of TBM data, models, and reports into a single TBM practice. Hear from Poonam Kataria, Sr. Manager of TBM, as she shares how TBM is driving Transport’s three key strategic outcomes: connecting a customer’s whole life; successful places for communities; and enabling economic activity.

Session topics will include: 

  • Utilizing the TBM Taxonomy to align M&A practices and drive behavioural change 
  • How the right level of support sets the right culture and TBM processes
  • Driving change in the organization based on data-driven facts

Presented by: 

  • Poonam Kataria, Sr. Manager, TBM, Transport for NSW 

Discuss how TBM supports visibility of investments across the enterprise to support setting best practices and standards for managing the impact of environmental, societal, and governance strategies by IT departments and organizations.

The TBM Council Standards Committee has built out TBM integration models with other IT disciplines, including Enterprise Agile and Product Thinking, as well as ServiceNow CSDM. Current findings will be shared to drive group discussion, experience, and feedback. 

Public cloud strategies are often embraced for the promise of rapid scalability, on-demand agility, and best-in-class security, resiliency, and features. However, public cloud adoption presents significant financial challenges that, when not addressed, inhibit any firm’s ability to exploit the promises of public cloud.  

To address these challenges, customers need to simultaneously resolve current inefficiencies and build capability to ensure avoidance of waste in the long term.  

In this session we discuss a detailed framework combining TBM-Cloud with FinOps, allowing customers to understand how to implement a program to overcome these challenges and financially succeed in the cloud. 

Session discussion topics include: 

  • A detailed view of the activities required to implement a TBM-Cloud with FinOps Journey 
  • Detail the flow of information required for each task 
  • Provide guidance on which activities should be performed when

 

Presented by:

  • Nathan Besh, TBM-Cloud Evangelist, TBM Council 

Project to Product Transition

Outcome-focused development via agile transformation

For organizations looking to transition from projects to products, TBM can help organize resources and outcomes into value streams – the specific sets of activities that align to business outcomes.

Accelerating Cloud Adoption

Drive measurable outcomes with your cloud strategy

For organizations trying to accelerate their cloud journey, TBM provides a way to map a plan and measure the outcomes from cloud migration to cloud cost management to cloud optimization.

Morning Sessions

A look back at 10 years of TBM leadership and community building.

Speaker:

  • Ashley Pettit, SVP & CIO, State Farm Insurance

Introduced more than 10 years ago, Technology Business Management (TBM) was born out of the need for CIOs to have a management system to drive their technology operating strategy. At its core, the TBM discipline gives visibility into technology spend to provide common ground and enable a collaborative partnership across teams for prioritizing resources and achieving business outcomes. In this session, the TBM Council Standards Committee Chair, Atticus Tyson will share how over the past few years TBM has evolved to ensure leaders are able to accelerate digital initiatives, embrace the cloud, and communicate today’s complex technology landscape. TBM enables organizations to frequently and quickly evaluate projects, platforms, and investments to address the needs of the modern enterprise.

Speaker:

  • Atticus Tysen, SVP Product Development, Chief Information Security & Fraud Prevention Officer, Intuit

Atticus Tyson and Phil Alfano will guide the group through an executive discussion to capture “What is digital success to you?”. Is it how your organization creates new business capabilities? The elimination of legacy processes and systems? Funding innovation? Or all of the above as long as it drives an improved customer experience? Discuss with your table mates, as an overall group, and capture learnings and takeaways to bring back to your own team.

Speakers:

  • Atticus Tyson, SVP Product Development, Chief Information Security & Fraud Prevention Officer, Intuit
  • Phil Alfano, Field CTO, Apptio

How does a 170-year-old financial institution deliver a new, fully modernized technology strategy while supporting 24×7 service to their customers across a multitude of platforms, including point-of-sale, mobile, and web services? Mike Brady, Nicole Holmes, and Chad Schmidt will share how at Wells Fargo, they are creating a Technology Infrastructure team founded in the TBM discipline and responsible for aligning with internal partners to adopt an automation first approach for accelerating the delivery of services and deploying enhancements at speed. All while remaining compliant, secure, and agile.

Speakers:

  • Mike Brady, EVP, Technology Infrastructure, Wells Fargo
  • Nicole Holmes, EVP, CFO for Technology, Wells Fargo
  • Chad Schmidt, SVP, Technology Finance Modernization, Wells Fargo

It’s been two years since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. To re-imagine employee and customer experiences, every company was forced to speed up their shift to digital from multi-year project plans to instead creating, executing, and delivering new business models in a matter of weeks. As we emerge from this crisis, we recognize this shift is not slowing down but exponentially increasing as businesses continue to respond to societal expectations of anytime, anywhere. In this session, Sunny Gupta will share how the companies best positioned to quickly respond to changing market conditions and hyper competition have a holistic view of their technology spend so they can be agile in their investment decisions, use the cloud as a competitive advantage, and align their resources to product delivery models and continuously measure value.

Speaker:

  • Sunny Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO, Apptio

Afternoon Sessions

Spinning up a cloud-native posture is a desired strategy for many organizations, however few have the time, resources, and budget to achieve 100% public cloud operations. In 2018, Equifax set a 5-year goal to achieve this, striving to provide their customers with faster innovation, more flexible business agility, and stronger cybersecurity. Hear from RJ Hazra, SVP & CFO, Technology on the lessons and successes the Equifax team has found along their journey, and what remains as they cross into their final year of their company-wide digital transformation.

Speaker:

  • RJ Hazra, SVP & CFO, Technology & Security, Equifax

The cloud is a significant shift in computing and companies need to get maximum value from it. FinOps is the evolving cloud financial management practice that empowers organizations to track and maximize cloud spend and enable tech, finance, and business teams to collaborate on data-driven spending decisions. In this talk, J.R. Storment, Executive Director of the FinOps Foundation will explore the intersection between TBM and the FinOps practice and the benefits achieved. Session discussion topics include: 

  • Creating a culture of ownership over cloud usage and spend
  • The most important challenges to tackle for delivering products faster while gaining financial control and predictability
  • FinOps organization structures in large and small organizations from the State of FinOps 2022 report

 

Speaker:

    • J.R. Storment, Executive Director, FinOps Foundation

In this engaging conversation, executive leaders will share both the challenges and best practices realized on their journey to embrace product-based innovation.

Session discussion topics include:

  • Achieving results as you shift from a projects-to-products innovation model
  • Maximizing CIO/CFO partnerships in this new paradigm
  • Building your innovation strategy around value streams, stable teams, and a high degree of customer centricity

Speakers:

  • John Wilson, VP, IT Costing & Performance Management, MetLife
  • Kaarina Bourquin, Director, Strategy & Portfolio Operations & Technology, The Standard
  • Moderated by Toyan Espeut, Chief Customer Officer, Apptio

Session abstract coming soon

Speakers:

    • Brendan Kinkade, VP, Build ISV, Technology & Hybrid Cloud, IBM
    • Moderated by Phil Alfano, Field CTO, Apptio Foundation

TBM empowers hundreds of decision makers with the facts they need to execute a digital strategy faster, without bias, and in alignment across business units. This includes technology consumers, service and application owners, LOB CIOs, enterprise PMOs, compliance leaders, budget coordinators, and many more. What are the fundamentals of developing and executing a successful TBM practice? In this session, experienced practitioners will share the lessons and foundations they’ve learned delivering business value for their organizations with TBM.

Session discussion topics include:

  • Fundamentals of proper support and sponsorship across key stakeholders
  • Demonstrating how and why TBM is core to strategy and a digital operating model
  • Developing, educating, and enabling your core team
  • Implementing or enhancing the necessary TBM processes

Speakers:

    • Jeri Koester, CIO, Marshfield Clinic Health System
    • Latrise Brissett, Managing Director, Global IT, Accenture
    • Leslie Scott, VP & CIO, IT Enterprise Services, Stanley Black & Decker
    • Moderated by Jason Byrd, Managing Director, Technology Strategy & Advisory, Accenture