Service Costing as a Financial Planning & Analysis tool

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Most discussions about enhancing existing services or transforming the business revolves around technology. Whether it is an automated process to husk beans, upgrading enterprise systems to make workers more efficient, or improving infrastructure to make digital transactions and processes more efficient and secure,; it is the management of information technology that affects modern companies today. Considerations about how to leverage investments a company makes in technology drives the future direction of business.

Quick Take Away: Businesses see even better results when they can automate their data flows and modeling so that IT Finance can actively participate in FP&A activities and not just crunch numbers to throw over the wall. By providing better data inputs, your financial analysts are able to ask better questions and provide forecasts and analysis that help drive the organization to success.

Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) and IT Finance

The analysis and presentation of ways the business can benefit their budget has long rested in the hands of the corporate FP&A organization.

Long term planning, short term planning, scenario planning, risk adjusted forecasts, and analysis filled reporting are functions performed by the FP&A team to support business decisions.

Sometimes unknown to these functions, reporting to either the CFO or the CIO, is an IT finance group. IT finance groups understand how an IT organization invests their budget and need to understand the forces that can affect the upcoming forecast.

Service Costing models and processes to capture the data that drives those models create a view of IT costs aligned with the business that were not previously available.

IT organizations that understand the services they provide can give timelines on anticipated changes to cost drivers like infrastructure and staffing. Understanding the costs associated with the infrastructure that support business services can provide clear and detailed information for FP&A “what-if” scenarios.

Beyond the cost management and budgeting supported monthly by the IT Finance team, with this partnership and inputs from the IT finance models, the FP&A organization can now receive a clear picture of costs associated with IT investments to shape the future of the business and have options to react to unexpected events.

Not Sure if your data is ready for this level of modeling? Check out our post on Data Maturity Assessments , attend this virtual class on data assessments, or talk to us about our maturity assessment service.

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