TBM Model

What Makes the TBM Model Unique?

Unlike a static data structure, the TBM Model is dynamic. It is built to:

• Trace spend from origin to consumption across multiple dimensions (e.g., GL accounts to user groups, infrastructure to business services)
• Integrate source data from ERP, ITSM, CMDB, APM, cloud billing, HR, and asset systems
• Apply flexible allocation rules to reflect real-world consumption patterns, shared resource usage, or hybrid environments
• Output decision-ready views for different stakeholder groups (e.g., Finance, Technology, Product, Business Units)

The TBM Model helps organizations tackle some of their most urgent and complex challenges, including:

• AI cost management – model and monitor the rapidly growing infrastructure and tooling costs for AI/ML solutions
• Cloud spend optimization – allocate and benchmark IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS usage across business units and applications
• Sustainability insights – track emissions and environmental impact alongside financial cost
• Showback and chargeback – attribute IT and cloud service costs to internal and external consumers to drive accountability
• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) – calculate the full lifecycle cost of applications, services, platforms, and digital products

Visit our TBM Modeling page for a deeper dive into how to configure and scale your TBM Model to fit your organizational needs.

Integrating the TBM Taxonomy

The TBM Model integrates the TBM Taxonomy’s four layers:

• Cost Pools – Categorize spend by nature (e.g., labor, software, cloud services)
• Resource Towers – Group resources by technical function (e.g., applications, compute, storage)
• Technology Solutions – Represent the digital products or services delivered
• Consumers – Capture who or what benefits from those services (e.g., business units, departments, external customers

These taxonomy layers provide the semantic backbone of the model, ensuring consistency in how data is classified, allocated, and reported. However, the model relies on additional contextual data—such as time dimensions, performance metrics, consumption volumes, service catalogs, and organizational hierarchies—to generate meaningful insights.

Built on the TBM Foundations

The TBM Model layer is only as strong as the foundations beneath it. In the TBM Framework, the Foundations layer is where every organization begins its journey—establishing the readiness, resources, and capabilities required to build a trustworthy and scalable model.

Before cost and consumption data can be modeled, organizations must first stand up a TBM practice and prepare their technical environment. The Foundations layer ensures both of these are in place, creating the necessary conditions for successful TBM modeling and long-term value realization.

Here’s how each foundational element directly supports the TBM Model:

• Roles – A well-defined TBM team (Executive Sponsors, Practice Leads, Analysts, Administrators, Change Managers) provides the human capital required to operate, maintain, and evolve the model. Without this team, modeling efforts lack stewardship and accountability.
• Data – The model relies on diverse data sets from Finance, IT, HR, procurement, cloud platforms, CMDBs, and more. Foundational data governance ensures this information is properly sourced, validated, structured, and maintained for modeling accuracy.
• Tools – Whether spreadsheet-based or leveraging enterprise TBM platforms, modeling requires software capable of ingesting, allocating, analyzing, and reporting across large and varied datasets. Tools define what’s possible in your TBM environment.
• Methods – TBM models must reflect standardized methods for cost allocation, service modeling, chargeback/showback, benchmarking, and scenario planning. These practices create consistency and comparability across time, teams, and technologies.
• Change – Organizational Change Management (OCM) ensures that the model isn’t just technically sound but actively used. A strong foundation of change readiness helps align stakeholders, foster trust in insights, and promote action based on TBM outputs.

Once these foundational pillars are in place, organizations are ready to develop the TBM Model itself—structuring costs and consumption through the TBM Taxonomy, incorporating taxonomy extensions, and aligning with connected standards like FinOps, NIST, and ServiceNow CSDM.

Importantly, these foundations don’t just support the creation of the model. They enable every layer above it—including TBM Outcomes and Organizational Value Drivers—by ensuring that the insights delivered are trustworthy, explainable, and operationally relevant.

Learn more about setting up these critical elements on the TBM Foundations page.

Once these foundational elements are in place, your organization is ready to begin building and configuring your TBM Model. Visit the TBM Modeling page for step-by-step guidance on model setup, taxonomy alignment, data mapping, and more.

Enabling TBM Outcomes

Once in place, the TBM Model enables the next layer of the framework: TBM Outcomes. These outcomes—such as transparency, insight, alignment, and optimization—represent the organizational capabilities that emerge from effective modeling and data governance.

They are the operational competencies that allow stakeholders to use TBM insights for budgeting, planning, benchmarking, and investment decisions.

For a full description of these outcomes, visit the TBM Outcomes page.

Driving Organizational Value

At the top of the Framework are the Organizational Value Drivers—the enterprise-level goals that TBM helps realize. These include:

• Innovation
• Customer and employee experience
• Operational efficiency
• Risk mitigation
• Sustainability

Value Drivers are not just aspirations; they are strategic imperatives enabled by the insights and capabilities generated from the TBM Model and Outcomes layers.

Explore how TBM supports these drivers on the Organizational Value Drivers page.