Additions to the OOTB-reports - Budget

Hi

Thank you for looking into this.

From my perspective, I think the allocation of both solutions and consumers when talking on a budget level should be allocated similarly to how the actuals are allocated. It should be performed in the workbench.

The issue with the current setup is, that if changes happens to the allocations, it would affect both the budget and actual allocations.

The questions in this idea, is therefore quite closely tied together with the other idea I have created "Freezing a scenario".

This is the process of "locking" a scenario in Apptio, so you use a certain set of allocations, master data, and then you cannot replace this. You could also see this as creating a new "branch", where future changes will occur but not influence the previous "branch/scenario".

I'll give an example of how this could look like, and how I view the needs of the IT-management to have cost transparency in their IT-department:

The CIO has created a budget in October for the next FY (Jan-dec). The IT-team can upload the budget in and perform the  allocations for the budget. When actuals then hit, there might be changes between the budget and actuals. It might be that in April of the FY, a new service is created in the service catalogue that should now carry some labor cost. By freezing the scenario prior to changes in allocations, it is possible for the CIO to manage changes in business consumption on what was expected and what actually ended up happening during the FY. From our perspective, this is an "essential" part of understanding your actual cost, and enables the CIO to make informed decisions and see how changes affect the business consumption.

Therefore, to sum up the answers to your questions:

The solution and consumer allocation to the budget should be done in the workbench, but future changes to the workbench due to a "new reality" should not affect the budgetted allocations.

Applied some updates to the description.

I agree and we are looking to incorporate Budget metrics higher up in the cost model. This would be applied in two key areas: 1) Reporting (today, we don't provide Cost vs. Budget comparison in Solutions nor Consumers) and 2) Budget driver/allocation approach (today, we are using the same rules for allocating Cost, Budget, Forecast, CapEx, CapEx Budget, and CapEx Forecast in the models). However, we'd like to better understand what would be the expected approach for organizations related to the "source of the budget" at the Solutions and Consumer view.

QUESTIONS:

• How will you expect to get the budget at the Solution layer? Would this be determined in the planning system (e.g., IBM Apptio Planning includes a Solution level budget)? Or, would you be expecting to have a separate model allocation strategy for allocating the budget at the Cost Source level (cost center/account) up to Labor/Vendor > Solutions?

• How will you expect to get the budget at the Consumer layer? In a sophisticated solution, Demand Planning would estimate the volumes of services requested for the upcoming fiscal year along with an established rate, that define the Proform Charges. This could be the driver for the Consumer Budget view. In Essentials, we are not assuming that level of sophistication, how would you set the Consumer Budget? Bring it in directly from the corporate planning system? Or as for the Solution layer, would you configure a separate model allocation strategy for allocating the budget from Solutions to the Organization based on estimate allocations at the beginning of the fiscal year?

NOTE: This is directly related to the feature enhancement "Freezing of a Scenario in Costing Essentials".