Technology Business Management – Transforming Business Processes

Technology Business Management (TBTM) is an IT discipline which implements a common IT spend tree. TBTM allows companies to decompose IT expenses into more manageable, consistent groups to give C-level executives and C-suite administrators a better understanding of the operating costs of their company. By grouping IT expenses into separate expense categories, TBTM helps provide a better understanding of how and where IT spending should be spent. This allows a company to make informed spending decisions regarding its technology investments.

TBTM is designed to help C-level executives and C-Suite Administrators to determine operating cost priorities. TBTM uses six separate categories of IT costs in its balanced scorecard to illustrate the relative spending priorities of a company. The categories are: Technology Expense, Technology Investment, Functional Expense, Selling Expense, Administrative Expense and Variable Expense. When assessing TBTM’s operating model, these six categories are ignored in favor of a single category, Technology Service Expense. In this manner TBTM effectively “tiles” the IT cost landscape to allow C-level executives to make more informed decision as to the allocation of resources within each of the six categories of expense.

When determining T BTM operational data quality, three questions must be answered: What is the cost of implementing the Technology Business Model? How does deployment affect operational data quality? How does measurement of operational data quality affect the cost of deploying the Technology Business Model? The answers to these questions provide the foundation for T BTM cost analysis. These questions are also important for companies considering the adoption of a Technology Business Management framework, because developing operational T BTM is a significant part of the cost of implementing the framework.

Implementing a Technology Business Management system requires a considerable investment of time, personnel and financial resources. For this reason many executives believe that T BTM is not suitable for companies with finite budgets. This may be true in some instances, but T BTM’s flexible operational framework allows for a rapid migration from existing ERP applications to a T BTM-based software system after the implementation of the framework, provided that there are no significant risks to personnel or assets during this transition.

One way to demonstrate how transparently T BTM relates to company objectives is to consider how it affects the prioritization of internal business priorities. To illustrate, assume that the company has a Vision and a roadmap for achieving this vision through the execution of its business priorities. Once the framework is implemented and T BTM is implemented, all employees must align their performance expectations with these priorities. This aligning of performance expectations can be difficult if managers are not closely involved in the process of aligning these expectations, but T BTM provides a way to address these concerns.

To summarize, T BTM is an innovative framework that improves the internal aligning of performance expectations across an enterprise business unit. By implementing a well thought out framework, T BTM enables executives to articulate company goals and aligning personnel and resources to support these goals. Furthermore, by providing a transparent interface for company activities and processes, T BTM empowers employees to make informed decisions about their own role and contribution to achieving company objectives. The overall result is a seamless integration of internal and external activities and processes that enhances performance, but also brings greater transparency to the decision making process.