- Liz Feller
- November 8, 2017
Tuesday night marked the TBM (Technology Business Management) Council’s fifth annual TBM Council Awards Gala. Emcee Kim Manigault, EVP & CFO of Technology & Operations at KeyBank (also a 2016 TBM Award winner and Apptio customer), stole the show with her glamorous entrance, killer dance moves, and larger-than-life personality. The grand event brought together over 1,300 IT leaders to honor six organizations for their outstanding solutions delivered through TBM.
Congratulations to American Express, Exelon, Cisco, SunTrust Bank, Caesars Entertainment, and Micron Technology!
The fabulous Kim Manigault, pictured above, was emcee for the gala, which was held at the Wynn in Las Vegas.
As the technology economy grows, IT leaders have a growing impact on business outcomes. Their ultimate measure of success is now tied to things like profitability, operational excellence, financial leadership, and transformation. This year’s winners set the bar high, and provide a roadmap for others to aspire to.
Here are the winners:
IT Financial Leadership Award
This award recognizes today’s corporate finance teams (with IT responsibilities) and/or technology controllers, who are driving IT financial strategies, and capabilities designed to meet the new demands of today’s IT organizations.
Award recipient: American Express
American Express Technology has taken a leap of faith, collaborating with corporate leadership and leveraging strong financial management principles to achieve impressive results. What began as a strategy to streamline chargebacks and forecasting has become a holistic approach to IT cost transparency that enables service owners to own their P&L, and technology to drive an agile transformation. Leveraging TBM, the Technology organization has reduced expenses by 4% CAGR over the past five years, at a time when the company has continued to grow. They’ve accomplished this while delivering equivalent or better capacity and capabilities, and positively impacting topline performance in areas critical to growth.
IT Optimization Award
This award recognizes the strategic and bold use of data to drive decisions for technology efficiency, agility, quality, performance, and business value.
Award recipient: Exelon
As Exelon has grown in size and scope to become the dominant force in energy delivery across the US, its IT organization has had to keep pace. Exelon IT has used cost transparency to reorganize and retool into a shared services organization, offering IT services and technologies to the company's nationwide network of utilities at a substantially reduced cost. Today, perception of IT as a cost center and a drag on corporate growth, has shifted to IT as a leader in digital transformation, and a team other businesses look to for advice.
IT Services Transformation Award
This award recognizes IT organizations who have successfully applied technology business data, and processes to drive transformation in cloud, on-premises, and/or hybrid services strategy, design, or delivery.
Award recipient: Cisco
For over a decade, Cisco IT has applied business data to transform IT services strategy and delivery, garnering the support of C-suite executives, and inspiring supply chain and HR teams to follow a new model for understanding costs holistically. Today, TBM and Apptio are embedded into the organization, providing a mature framework for enabling new business capabilities, delivering IT value with speed, and empowering decision-making beyond the IT organization.
Business Innovation Award
This award recognizes technology organizations that have applied technology business data and processes to better satisfy the needs of the business and change conversations from cost to value (via tradeoffs).
Award recipient: SunTrust Bank
SunTrust is a purpose-driven organization focused on financial well-being. The financial services organization uses TBM as a foundational element to align IT to products and services, and to help penetrate the digital ecosystems where clients interact with financial services. The IT team has leveraged cost transparency to shift run-the-bank spend to change-the-business investment, at the same time changing the dialogue with the business and securing executive level sponsorship and buy-in. Today, executives use TBM data to make strategic business decisions, fund next generation technology strategies (including cloud), and partner with the business to optimize spend.
Strategy and Planning Award
This award recognizes IT leaders who have found a way to enable IT to be the value partner their businesses so desperately needs.
Award recipient: Caesars Entertainment
Emerging from a voluntary reorganization, Caesars is poised for growth. The global casino-entertainment leader has moved from “keeping the lights on” to fueling expansion, initiating significant organizational changes, and a revamp of all major technology systems. Getting Apptio up and running in front of all this change has helped the IT team build the trust needed to move forward with large initiatives—replacing key platforms in finance, HR, sales, and marketing, and exploring innovations to attract new business from millennial customers.
TBM Pacesetter Award
This award recognizes teams who have made a significant impact to their business and their industry with TBM, in a short period of time.
Award recipient: Micron Technology
Micron hired their first CIO in 2015, who immediately established a TBM Office and began implementing an out-of-the-box reporting process with strong support from IT leadership. Today, the IT finance team leverages self-service automation to simplify quarterly budgeting/forecasting and the annual budgeting cycle, offering new visibility into budget line items for cost center managers (who previously had no detail). As a result, budget owners are more accountable for accurate forecasts and budget variances. This has helped the team track much closer to target and reduce annual underspend on the CapEx budget to zero.
Congratulations to all of 2017’s TBM Council Award finalists and winners!
Visit our TBM awards page for more details on this year’s winners and finalists, including videos and full case studies. Find more information on the TBM Council Awards here.
