IT Showback & Chargeback

Business units always have questions about their IT spend. How much are we paying for IT services? Are we really using those services? Can we get the same results by spending less? What is the difference between in-house and outsourced options? Furthermore, as organizations grow and become global all using centralized, shared IT, you must show that IT costs have been justifiably allocated to the different P&Ls.

Business stakeholders must be empowered with clear visibility into their IT costs, usage, and alternatives. With cost transparency, IT spending is aligned with business goals, IT shops are more cost effective, and it becomes easier to shift towards shared and virtualized IT and gain greater efficiency.

To address this growing need for visibility, it's imperative to provide a detailed monthly, quarterly, and annual bill of IT spend and usage to your business stakeholders. Whether you choose to do this in the form of showback or chargeback, it's an enormous, error-prone task when done manually or using Excel, Access, or similar approaches. Today's successful enterprises are shifting their approach to use automated solutions to deliver IT showback and IT chargeback.

Empower Business Units with Improved IT Cost Visibility

Digital Fuel's IT Financial Management (ITFM) IT Showback & Chargeback is a SaaS business application that provides business units full visibility into IT costs and alternatives. From reporting on usage and costs all the way to a full IT chargeback process that generates a detailed bill of IT, actual usage of IT services is tracked and mapped to specific business units, P&L centers, geographies, product lines, and more.

Monthly, quarterly, and annual views are presented with detailed drilldowns that allow investigation or root cause analysis as well as what-if analysis. These critical views empower the business to take full ownership of their spending, and see the cost impact of choosing alternatives, all while providing a fully documented record of spending for both IT and the business. For organizations that chose to perform a full chargeback process, price list calculation, creation, and publishing is available as well as periodic detailed bills with approval process, root cause analysis, true ups, and re-forecasting.

The Value of IT Showback & Chargeback

• Lower IT spending by driving line of business (LOB) accountability
• Reduce IT costs by proactive control and visibility
• Gain predictability in IT spending
• Foster interactive communications between IT and its customers
• Automate error-prone manual efforts

Key Capabilities

• Automate end-of-month statement creation
• Publish detailed end-of-month statements that include cost, usage, and performance to IT customers
• Enable detailed drilldown and analysis by LOBs
• Use the what-if analyzer to find the best IT alternatives for the business
• Automate the creation of price lists based on formulas and margin targets
• Publish price list for all IT services

Sample of Out-of-the-Box Reports

• Monthly/quarterly/annual cost by LOB, geography, product line, and service line
• Monthly/quarterly annual usage by LOB, geography, product line, and service line
• Monthly/quarterly/annual usage and cost variance from plan by LOB, geography, product line, and service line
• Top spenders by LOB, geography, product line, and service line
• Margin by LOB, geography, product line, and service line
• True up status by LOB, geography, product line, and service line

IT Showback & Chargeback Process Flow Diagram

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IT Showback & Chargeback Screenshots

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