Organizational Value Drivers

What Are Organizational Value Drivers?

Organizational Value Drivers represent the strategic business outcomes that technology and technology leaders are expected to deliver. They are the most visible expression of TBM’s purpose—bridging the gap between technology execution and business impact. Unlike TBM Outcomes, which describe the internal capabilities and repeatable processes of a mature TBM practice, value drivers reflect external results such as improved agility, better experiences, reduced risk, or measurable progress on sustainability goals.

These value drivers are made possible by the foundations of TBM (governance, data, culture, roles), are enabled by a robust TBM Model (using the TBM Taxonomy), and are activated through the TBM Outcomes. Together, these elements allow organizations to translate data and insights into actions that drive tangible business value.

The TBM Framework visual can be inserted at this point to show how Foundations, Model, Outcomes, and Value Drivers relate to one another—emphasizing that value drivers sit at the top, dependent on all elements beneath.

To learn how to build the capabilities and modeling practices needed to realize these value drivers, consider exploring training and certification options or attending our next TBM Tuesdays livestream.

Value Drivers Defined

Each value driver described below represents a distinct strategic objective organizations aim to achieve through effective technology investments and governance. These are not abstract aspirations—they are the real-world goals that TBM supports through evidence-based decision-making and cross-functional alignment.

Financial Performance

Financial Performance centers on improving the cost-effectiveness and business alignment of technology investments. This value driver focuses on ensuring that technology delivers measurable economic benefit—both by reducing waste and by maximizing the return on every dollar spent. Financial performance is not only about cutting costs; it’s about directing resources to their highest-value uses and ensuring long-term sustainability of the technology portfolio.

How TBM improves financial performance:

• Provides transparency into spend across towers, vendors, and business units

• Enables cost allocation, showback, and chargeback to influence behavior

• Supports budgeting and forecasting aligned to business priorities

• Facilitates benchmarking against internal and external targets

With TBM, organizations gain visibility into where money is spent, how efficiently it’s used, and whether it aligns with strategic goals. Financial modeling and transparency create accountability, enable smarter decisions, and strengthen partnerships across Finance, Technology, and Business leaders.

Operational Efficiency

Efficiency focuses on reducing waste, increasing operational productivity, and maximizing the return on technology investments.

How TBM drives efficiency:

• Offers benchmarking against peers and internal baselines to highlight cost anomalies
• Identifies redundancies and opportunities for technology rationalization across apps, towers, and vendors
• Empowers portfolio decisions that balance performance, demand, and cost

With TBM modeling, organizations can identify the total cost of duplicative services or infrastructure, compare with internal or market benchmarks, and make data-driven decisions about consolidation. Capabilities like insight and optimization are often supported by repeatable use cases—see examples in the High Impact TBM Use-Cases guide.

Practitioners interested in this value driver may benefit from our Finance for Tech course or explore operational success stories shared during TBM Tuesdays events.

Innovation

Innovation refers to the organization’s ability to develop new digital capabilities, products, or services that deliver market differentiation, drive growth, or enable new business models.

How TBM enables innovation:

• Unlocks capacity for innovation by optimizing existing costs and identifying reinvestment opportunities
• Illuminates cost structures and team allocations through value stream and agile team modeling
• Supports innovation governance through improved demand planning and strategic alignment

By connecting strategic priorities to cost and resource allocation, TBM helps prioritize high-value innovation opportunities. Through capabilities like insight and transparency, organizations can identify which teams and services are most responsible for creating business value. The TBM Executive Primer and Intelligent Cloud Adoption eBook both explore how technology leaders are using TBM to scale innovation across teams.

Risk & Compliance

Risk addresses the organization’s exposure to cybersecurity, compliance, operational disruption, and financial risk tied to technology investments and operations.

How TBM mitigates risk:

• Enables traceable financial visibility into risk management efforts, such as cybersecurity initiatives
• Integrates with the NIST Framework to assess risk coverage and prioritize investments
• Supports business continuity planning by modeling dependencies and potential impacts across services

Risk visibility becomes actionable when TBM is used to track investment in control areas, such as identity access management or disaster recovery. With outcome-enabling capabilities like governance readiness and performance modeling, leaders can engage the right stakeholders and justify funding decisions. Learn more through our Connected Standards and Risk & Security resources.

For ongoing dialogue on how TBM supports risk mitigation explore related topics in our State of TBM Report.

Experience

Experience focuses on improving how customers, employees, and partners interact with the organization’s digital services. This includes performance, availability, and usability across applications and services.

How TBM enhances experience:

• Provides cost and performance modeling that enables investment in high-impact user services
• Helps leaders understand the TCO of experience-related platforms and allocate funding accordingly
• Supports service health analysis and connects technical metrics with business satisfaction indicators

When paired with TBM Outcomes like transparency and alignment, TBM allows teams to connect system performance and cost with user outcomes. By modeling services with the TBM Taxonomy, organizations can distinguish between underperforming and high-impact platforms. The Citizens Bank Case Study shows how TBM-supported visibility helped improve experience across lines of business.

Technology leaders can explore this connection more deeply in our Certified TBM Executive course.

Sustainability

Sustainability refers to reducing the environmental footprint of technology while supporting broader corporate social responsibility and ESG goals.

How TBM supports sustainability:

• Enables carbon-conscious decision-making by attributing energy use and emissions to services and assets
• Allows modeling of cloud and on-prem environments for energy and cost optimization
• Supports sustainability metrics reporting by linking environmental impact to financial and operational performance

TBM builds the foundation for environmental insight by connecting usage, vendor, and facility data to the TBM Model. By reporting environmental impact alongside financial outcomes, technology leaders can support sustainability initiatives with credible, decision-ready data. The 2024 State of TBM Report provides perspectives on emerging practices, and the Sustainability page includes metrics and peer strategies.

To deepen your understanding of TBM’s role in sustainability—or any value driver—join the TBM Council to access practitioner communities and curated learning experiences.

Connecting Value Drivers to Modeling and Outcomes

Value drivers are not achieved in isolation. They emerge from the consistent execution of TBM Outcomes—like transparency, insight, optimization, and alignment—which themselves are made possible by a well-governed and taxonomically structured TBM Model.

Organizations that use TBM effectively can connect day-to-day financial and operational decisions to enterprise-level goals. For example:

• Transparency and benchmarking help drive efficiency
• Investment alignment and governance support innovation
• Cost modeling and allocation reinforce sustainability and risk mitigation

Visit the TBM Outcomes and TBM Modeling pages to learn how these disciplines enable value realization.

Training programs like the Certified TBM Executive course or our Cloud and Agile Primers can help you apply these concepts in practice.

When fully realized, value drivers demonstrate how TBM enables technology to deliver on the enterprise’s highest priorities—making TBM not just a financial or operational framework, but a strategic enabler of transformative outcomes.