Great product
December 08, 2022
Great product
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
ApptioOne
Overall Satisfaction with ApptioOne
About 18 months ago, we had just completed a large transformation journey and had run for a number of years. It was hugely complex, and at the end of that, we had to define a new IT strategy and approach going forward. as part of that, one of the cornerstones of our strategy was application portfolio management. And within that, we needed to define a way to measure the total cost of ownership at an application level, a service level, and all sorts of things. So, as a result of that, we went to the market to try and determine what the main players would be. Apptio was the suggested product. We did a beauty parade of all the various people in that space, and Apptio came out as the clear winner. That's where the love affair began. So the scope of the use case started off as the total cost of ownership across our application estate for the IT element of what we run in the bank.
And that was to fit into the application portfolio management, primarily to feature in things like technology lifecycle management, for the currency of various applications, operational risk and readiness, and the ability to plan strategically and ensure that we had value return on investment.
So those are the initial use cases that we needed - total cost of ownership to deliver against. And what we discovered off the back of that, once we completed our first iteration, our total cost of ownership, we got an awful lot more than we bargained for. We discovered a lot of heritage and legacy information that we could potentially rationalize.
We were able to radically simplify our application, still reduce it dramatically. We were able to put together cost-saving initiatives, which allowed us to save money straight away. We were able to review and optimize relationships with vendors. So it became a great success. Maybe a little bit too much success.
We had to stop what we were doing and concentrate on all the opportunities we'd identified. And now we're going back to revisit that and try and move further down the journey, securing and operationalizing that total cost of ownership.
And that was to fit into the application portfolio management, primarily to feature in things like technology lifecycle management, for the currency of various applications, operational risk and readiness, and the ability to plan strategically and ensure that we had value return on investment.
So those are the initial use cases that we needed - total cost of ownership to deliver against. And what we discovered off the back of that, once we completed our first iteration, our total cost of ownership, we got an awful lot more than we bargained for. We discovered a lot of heritage and legacy information that we could potentially rationalize.
We were able to radically simplify our application, still reduce it dramatically. We were able to put together cost-saving initiatives, which allowed us to save money straight away. We were able to review and optimize relationships with vendors. So it became a great success. Maybe a little bit too much success.
We had to stop what we were doing and concentrate on all the opportunities we'd identified. And now we're going back to revisit that and try and move further down the journey, securing and operationalizing that total cost of ownership.
- One of the things that does particularly well, which possibly isn't something that's advertised as much, is it shines the mirror on what you're doing yourself internally and whether you can answer all of the questions that are required to deliver against that TCO model. So it gives you a very strong sense of how well set up you are to answer what's required of the model. Once you deliver against that and the model actually gives you output, you can then apply that to your business divisions, your technology divisions, your application, and your domains in a way that you then have empirical data that you've never had before.
- And as a result of that, it moves all of your debates - chargeback and cost and strategic investment - from being a subjective emotional debate to being much more objective with figures you can track, trace, and justify. So it becomes a much more data-driven decision.
- In fairness, I wouldn't say it's missing functionality. There's so much functionality available within Apptio. Sometimes it can be daunting and a bit of a relentless search to try and guide your way through it unassisted. Now you do learn a lot by doing that, but it's time-consuming, and you can lift the phone and ask for guidance, and it'll be provided, but you don't learn as much in doing that. So there's a degree of growth that's required in using.
- So you become more experienced and more mature in how you can actually apply the functionality of the product to the questions that you have at hand. Because of the amount of time it takes to explain your problem or the context of it to somebody from Apptio, for example, for them to apply their skill set to get you the solution, you could probably have done it yourself if you knew where to look better. So there's a degree of continual education and guidance required around that, which is provided, but you have to ask for it. People aren't necessarily in the habit of doing that too.
We're relatively new at the beginning of our journey. We haven't matured very much yet. So we've used the flexible reporting element - that's the only part we're using. We have a roadmap for getting to where we need to be to use each of those added benefit features. And we've certainly learned a lot from the Apptio conference about how to do that, the experiences of other users, and the role that, for example, the TBM Council can play in trying to help us through that. So it's given us some assurance around how we can get there while we're not.
- It's delivered on a lot of those, especially the relationship between IT and financing that relationship's been a bit of a rollercoaster on that journey. We've come out the other end of it, and we're all friends now, which is a good thing. So they've accepted the Apptio output and are much more involved in providing the data and helping to use the tool, which is excellent. I think one of the downsides that are probably not talked about enough is the fact that, um, once you have trained and delivered a TMB skillset within your organization, they become very good at that. So if you've got any high-performing members in that team, they become extremely valuable elsewhere. And we've unfortunately suffered the case whereby one of our highest performers was immediately then poached and went off elsewhere for a much better opportunity. So we applaud that for them, but it's really hard to train other people. It's really hard to take them up to speed, and you have to sort of go through those picks and troughs every time. So that's just life, you know.
- Cloudability
Avolution ABACUS Suite / LeanIX. Those were the only sort of serious competitors that we took an internal, assessment and Apptio hands down. Apptio came outta the gates very hot and made a very, brash claim that they would deliver a working proof of concept in four weeks with any data we provided them. We called their bluff on that, thinking they definitely won't be able to do that. So we said here's the data, and they delivered the proof of concept in four weeks, with an 85% level of accuracy, and the rest of them could not do that. So that's a big part of what won for them.
Do you think ApptioOne delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with ApptioOne's feature set?
Yes
Did ApptioOne live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of ApptioOne go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy ApptioOne again?
Yes