The winners of the 2016 TBM Council Awards were announced on November 8, 2016 at TBM Conference 2016. Over the next few weeks we will be profiling the winners and sharing how TBM is transforming the way business is managed at their organizations.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) believes in providing “technology innovation that fosters business transformation.” Whether via enterprise solutions or internal teams, this focus can be felt in every corner of the organization. Adoption of Technology Business Management (TBM) is one of the many ways HPE IT exemplifies the company’s goal of helping IT become more efficient, productive, and secure.
TBM as an Agent of Change
“To succeed in the idea economy, technology must be aligned to run the business. Nobody is more qualified to make that happen than the new Hewlett Packard Enterprise.” Meg Whitman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
As companies grow and change, IT teams are challenged to effectively manage resources while offering full transparency into IT spend. HPE’s TBM practice has enabled their IT organization to do both and more. By embracing TBM metrics that show where every dollar is spent, HPE was able to separate into two distinct companies with minimal impact to the respective businesses. For IT services that proved more challenging to split, transition service agreements were put in place to cover IT costs. TBM adoption before the separation allowed the HPE IT team to define and prepare the IT landscape going into 2016.
Getting to this point was not an easy task. When they began utilizing TBM, the team could only account for five percent of their overall IT budget. There wasn’t a clear understanding of consumption, total costs, or the value of their services. TBM was introduced to help explain IT costs to the business. Michel Brassart, Director HPE IT, TBM Office, IT Mergers & Acquisitions explains what it was like getting started with TBM. “My task was to bring transparency to the IT budget as fast as I could, in order to explain to the business where we were spending their dollars. We started from a complete end-to-end perspective, including all the end user services, the telecom expense, and so on.” By mapping each expense, no matter how inconsequential the cost, HPE IT can now account for nearly 100 percent of their overall budget. With a renewed understanding of costs, HPE IT is able to focus on President and CEO, Meg Whitman’s mission of insuring technology is aligned to run the business.
A New Culture with TBM
Looking back more than three years ago, the conversations around IT and spending were not easy ones. There was little transparency around spend and teams were challenged to justify their IT spend. Today, TBM has enabled a culture shift at HPE that allows the business and IT to talk about more than just reducing costs. They talk about value. Brassart explains the change in attitude, saying “TBM gets everyone in a mindset of focusing on why these costs exist and how to intelligently make them smaller, as opposed to just saying, ‘Reduce the costs and whatever happens, happens.’” The conversation now revolves around tradeoffs and collaboration with all stakeholders working on the same end goal: to help HPE become more cost effective and efficient.
Conversations around IT spend and consumption now go beyond the business leaders at HPE. Brassart and team are determined to change (in some cases, even start) the discussion around IT consumption at the individual consumer level. They are making it personal so users assume more accountability and ownership of their technology use. Currently in the pilot stage, Brassart’s goal is to send an individual bill of IT to the 200,000 employees that use IT resources. “It’s really telling them how to best utilize the technology,” said Brassart. The goal of this correspondence is not to shame or deter employees from using IT resources, but instead to create awareness around costs, jumpstart conversations, and help utilize resources more strategically.
IT Optimization at HPE
HPE was honored with the IT Optimization Award at TBM Conference 2016 in large part due to the work of Brassart and his team. Embracing TBM has allowed HPE IT to become a true partner to the business, creating greater transparency, changing the conversations around cost, and allowing for a focus on innovation that supports the business becoming more agile and responsive.
Interested in learning more about how HPE is changing the conversation around IT spend and innovation? Download their TBM Council Awards case study here.
Be on the lookout for continued coverage and highlights from TBM Conference 2016 and the TBM Council Awards. Follow the TBM Council on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook for the latest Council updates, membership information, and upcoming events.