Analyze and Validate ATUM Cost Pools

Summary

You can use Benchmarking to analyze and validate the cost pool distribution for an ATUM-aligned Cost Source or as a free-standing analysis in interactive benchmarking.

Beyond benchmarking

The Benchmarking product can be leveraged in a number of distinct ways, starting with an introduction to Apptio, through the deployment process and continuing into day-to-day operations, such as helping defend your IT budget. This article focuses on the ATUM cost pool validation aspect of using Interactive Benchmarking.

Using Interactive Benchmarking for cost pool validation

You can use Interactive Benchmarking to support the confirmation of cost pool allocations. By comparing an organization’s mapping of accounts to cost pools against the Apptio Community Data (ACD), a TBMA can demonstrate that the mappings are aligned well with ATUM, or identify areas where the model allocations might need to be improved.

Cost pool validation

Using an Interactive Benchmarking cost pool report (see image below), some cost pools in this example are above or below the colored rectangle. The rectangle represents the first through third quartile, comprising 50% of the data. While the highlighted value, hardware, is not outside of the range (a clear indicator that the mapping is likely wrong), it is still up towards the higher range of all values.

Based on the elevated value when comparing to the Hardware cost pool range, the next step is to navigate to the Cost Transparency Cost Pool Analysis report. The Details sub-element is selected (see image below) to view the Hardware cost pool for analysis. Note that “Depreciation & Amortization” and “Support & Maintenance” are the two areas with the highest spend.

The user, while investigating these costs, can select Hardware from the Summary by Cost Pool report (see image below) to study line-item costs. The user can study the details to learn if there is an inaccurate cost pool mapping or if the costs are simply above range.

The user can select the line item for the general ledger detail from the OpEx transaction view. Next, the user can make note that there is a significant charge for deprecation. This completes the analysis regarding why the value is higher. The higher value is not related to a mapping issue, but rather to actual costs that are higher than most. The follow-on step, which is out of scope for this article, is to leverage other Cost Transparency reports to complete the cost picture.

Conclusion

Using the Benchmarking product, the user can employ the Interactive Benchmarking capabilities for Cost Transparency cost pool mapping validation. By comparing the mapped and allocated values against the body of Apptio Community Data (ACD), a customer can analyze and validate the accuracy of their mappings and examine more fully the details to provide supporting evidence.