There are two types of TBM sites on the web; those that shill for Apptio and those that hate it. I guess I’m about to introduce the third type.
If you work in this space you know that Apptio is by far the largest current player in TBM tooling. They have deftly created a product and a community. They’ve made smart acquisitions and generally give you the tools to run your organization. So why all the hate? Well, being number one attracts doubters and the system it’s self has some drawbacks. They aren’t fatal to the mission, but you need to be aware before you get started. I’d like to keep this balanced so let’s try an alternating Pro/Con approach.
Pro – Apptio is the largest player in the space. Larger players have more folks who know how to use the system. Hiring will be easier.
Con – Apptio is expensive. Without getting into specifics regarding pricing, you can assume that Apptio is one of the more expensive tools you can introduce into the organization. For cost constrained orgs, this can be painful.
Pro – Apptio has a constantly expanding product suite.
Con – Apptio has a constantly expending product suite. It’s a plus and a minus in my mind. The core product (Cost Transparency) remains as good or better than most other solutions on the market. The newer modules are driven to help you run the org and to drive sales for Apptio. They are generally good ideas that require even better data within your organizationto function properly. Many companies should probably focus doing Cost Transparency well before they move on to other modules. Sometimes Apptio gets bored with the new modules and seems to create something new to replace them.
Pro – Apptio is fully customizable. Yes, they offer “out of the box” functionality, but your org is different and special (a little sarcasm here) so you need to customize. You can engage Apptio to do the customization ($$$) or refine using your own team. You can generally bend the system to match the needs of your org, even if it’s at a great cost. Apptio doesn’t mind as this creates vendor lock-in.
Con – Reporting in Apptio is meant to be an onscreen experience. You have the ability to dump data and charts out of the system and move them into PowerPoint, but the richest experience is in the tool. For many orgs, that’s just not the way you work.
Pro – Most of the views in Apptio are created with the CIO in mind. To that end, they are pithy and keep it high level. That’s generally been a good experience for upper management as they want to tell a story and not get dragged down.
Con – Application owners won’t have bespoke reporting without a lot of effort. When you have multiple layers in your org who all have slightly different ways they look at the same data, a lot of money is going to be spent. On the fly reporting is nearly impossible in the tool in my experience. That brings data back into Excel. In a perfect world, you could tell the client to adjust their needs, but that isn’t likely to happen.
Pro – That front end looks great. Their UI folks should be proud. It’s like they sat with every CIO and took notes.
Con – Your data will almost never be clean enough to enable all the functionality. This is obviously more of a weakness of your shop than the tool, but every shop has this problem. When I’ve inquired about not showing some of the reports, I’ve been told it’s not easy to hide things in Apptio. Be prepared for a lot of N/As.
Pro – Apptio (through the TBM Council) has created a language. You can’t underestimate the benefits of using a common taxonomy. This cuts down on jargon and translations and make TBM skills portable.
Con – Most of the Apptio pre-canned reporting focuses on Actuals only. Most companies are looking for Actuals versus budget comparisons and it doesn’t seem like the tools wants to do this without effort.
Pro – Apptio is one of the few tools to bring balance sheet reporting into view. This is excellent in my opinion. The placement (including in the “Labor” screen) is clunky, but the idea is sound.
Con – Most of the high level charts are unable to natively accept negative values. That means for shops that have a lot of capitalization, you will get charts that are unable to load. Nothing drives more questions than a bad chart.
We could go one all day and there are more Apptio topics to come. In the mean time, feel free to reach out to me to add your own.