One theme from TBMC25 that really stood out to me was the concept of Technology Economics presented by Howard Rubin and explained in Rubin Worldwide‘s white paper here. Long and short, the concept advocates treating IT as an investment portfolio that the business relies on rather than a cost center.
It’s well explained. Every category of technology spend has its own risk and return profile. Custom apps behave like high-risk and high-reward assets. Cloud is more balanced. Legacy environments deliver stability with lower returns. The point is not to cut across the board. The point is to optimize the mix.
TBM practitioners have been beating this drum for years. Technology Economics is simply a different perspective on how to do it
Technology Economics -> TBM -> Hi, AMI!
I’m always blown away by concepts that take a few things you already know and marry them together – like wow. This one just makes plain sense. And it really does dovetail into the gifts AMI has been fighting hard to bring to the world for last 34 years…
Get Your Data Right
You can’t optimize technology investments when cost data is slow to hit the ledger, inventories have big gaping holes, and service costs aren’t associated to the departments and projects that consume them. This is the exact gap AMI helps close so TBM teams can trust the numbers they put in front of the business.
We play in the mud and muck of messy invoices (and the supplemental data you need to make spend make sense) to make this information actionable…and love every minute of it.
Get Good Data Visible
Technology Economics depends on clear insight into cost, utilization, performance, and business outcomes. That’s almost impossible when telecom, network, mobility, or cloud spend is oversummerized inside a general ledger structure that meets finance’s needs but lacks the context required to efficiently map to any business outcome.
Grab the Quick Wins to Prop Up Your Title Shot
A core idea in this model is shifting spend out of low-return areas. In practice, that starts with simple but important cleanup. Finding misbilled services. Removing redundant lines. Eliminating unused features. Fixing aging services that no longer deliver value. These quick wins free up dollars for modernization and innovation.
TBM Gets Attention When You Make Someone Else’s Day
Technology Economics is ultimately about tying spend to real business results. TBM gives practitioners a structure to do that, but only if the underlying data is timely, accurate and complete.
Imagine the mutual win when you can make AP’s life easier along the way. That’s where AMI fits as your TBM utility.
You can build a partnership with AP/Finance by lessening their burden through automation while also making the data foundation strong enough to tell the story you’ve have always wanted to tell.
Build a bridge.
The Bottom Line
Technology Economics is a fresh perspective on telling the TBM story. It gives practitioners better language for value and reinforces how critical clean, trustworthy data really is.
Yep. Still on my mind.
Coming out of #TBMC25, we at AMI are super excited to help any TBM practitioner energize their journey with clean, automated data and results that turn heads.
Want to See for Yourself?
AMI has a terrific program for organizations in the looking to electrify their TBM business cases.
With our Free Spend Health Check, you can uncover unoptimized service configurations, identify over or under-utilized services, spot service rates that are inconsistent or above current market levels, flag suspect charges, fees, and surcharges, and catch potential taxation errors.
All of these insights translate into quick cost reduction wins that give your TBM initiatives an extra power boost!
We can even help you identify where chargeback and showback opportunities exist on any technology or telecom invoice, inside or outside (for real) the ledger, helping get your IT “shareholders” more involved in your overall IT investment spend portfolio.
