Delivering cost visibility to a financial services group that offers solutions in 14 countries

The Challenge

The client faced critical challenges in managing its infrastructure spend:

• Management lacked a unified view of infrastructure spending, making it difficult for them to track and manage costs effectively.
• There was no consolidated view of costs. This decentralised approach to cost tracking resulted in fragmented data, making it challenging for CFOs and CIOs to obtain a comprehensive view of expenses and make improvements.

Together, these challenges led to inefficiencies that hindered financial forecasting and limited the ability of senior management to make informed decisions. Moreover, the lack of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) visibility hampered cost management efforts and resource allocation.

Solution

To address these issues, the client trusted MagicOrange Prism’s comprehensive cost management platform. The solution provided a centralised view of infrastructure spending by incorporating all spend data, including on-premises costs, vendor costs and labour, as well as cloud spend from two different cloud providers. With a holistic view of their spend data, the client’s team can now track and analyse infrastructure costs with ease.

The new solution also enabled a smoother workflow between IT and Finance departments by using the Technology Business Management (TBM) taxonomy. TBM is a framework and standard that helps organisations align their technology and IT investments with their business objectives by providing a standardised way to categorise and classify technology-related costs and services. This fosters more productive and effective communication between IT and Finance teams by creating a common language everyone can understand when discussing financial matters related to technology, often referred to as “Running IT as a Business”.

Finally, the client’s implementation of the MagicOrange Prism solution included creating specific views for infrastructure managers. These views offered real-time insights into the costs they managed giving management the tools and insights needed to make wiser, faster, better decisions. What’s more, real-time visibility fostered a culture of accountability as managers could pro-actively monitor and manage their cost responsibilities.

Benefits

• Total spend, available to see in one place: Thanks to MagicOrange, infrastructure managers gained a single, consolidated view of all infrastructure spend for the first time. This newfound visibility strengthened their ability to make informed decisions promptly, optimise cost management, and strategically allocate resources.
• Better on-premises and Cloud spend management: MagicOrange seamlessly integrates all spend data, providing a clear breakdown of on-premises vs cloud costs. This allows managers to optimise budget allocation and assess the cost-effectiveness of various solutions.
• Real-time cost comparison: Prism enables infrastructure managers to compare on-premises and cloud spend side by side – as well as accommodating different cloud providers. With this tool, management can identify cost-saving opportunities and explore more cost-efficient alternatives suited to the client’s evolving needs.
• A culture of commercial accountability and fair cost attribution: Dedicated views for infrastructure managers offer a transparent and easily understandable overview of their costs. This increased accountability fosters a cost-conscious culture and promotes better cost management practices across the organisation.
• Improved inter-department relations: The new solution has helped different departments to communicate more effectively by integrating classifications as per the TBM taxonomy.
• Strategic Insights reinforced by facts: MagicOrange's customisable dashboards and reports offers CFOs and CIOs strategic insights into IT costs, performance, and efficiency metrics. CFOs and CIOs can identify cost optimisation opportunities, streamline operations, and drive innovation through evidence-based decision-making.
• Predictive analytics and “What-If” calculations: Prism’s data analytics capabilities enable CFOs to leverage historical spending patterns and forecast future costs. CFOs can perform "What-If" scenarios to assess the financial impact of potential decisions or changes in infrastructure. This empowers managers and leaders to develop robust financial strategies and match their spending choices with business goals effectively.