ITFM Tools

ComSci was included as an IT Financial Management (ITFM) Tools vendor in Gartner’s recent report*, “Hype Cycle for Governance, Risk and Compliance Technologies, 2015.”

As the pressure continues to mount for IT to move beyond being a cost center and to transform into a strategic business partner, ITFM is more important than ever. Gartner confirmed this growth by stating that, “interest in ITFM tools continues to grow, at an estimated 10% to 15% during the past 18 months.” We’re not surprised to see 10%+ growth in less than two years and we’re excited to be included in their list of ITFM vendors.

Although ITFM software offerings are relatively new in the marketplace, the problems of effectively managing the finances of IT are not. Simply put, the internal systems that provide IT financial information are outdated, costly to maintain and inefficient at best. Gartner stated that, “Aligning IT operations to define and provide business-valued services — as opposed to managing technologies, understanding cost drivers, and providing transparency of IT costs and value delivered — will be key. Given that most corporate financial systems lack the granularity and flexibility that IT operations require, and spreadsheets lack the desired features, reporting and historical context, a more robust solution is required. ITFM tools, when properly implemented and maintained, can provide the business with improved cost optimization, transparency to external stakeholders, demand management of critical IT resources and an indication of IT financial compliance to efficiency requirements.”

It’s important for IT to be able to communicate the value they contribute back to the business. Gartner shared, “IT leaders with a communication objective are primarily interested in demonstrating value. Around 25% to 30% of chargeback-related inquiries stem from IT leadership’s desire to help the business understand the value IT delivers to the business and business operations.”** The rest of the business only cares about the value they are receiving – IT must be able to communicate that value in order to be a strategic business partner.

Over the last few years many firms have popped up to develop presentation layers that sit on top of these broken and inefficient systems and processes and claim to be the hottest technology of the day, but the problem still exists: no matter how nice the charts and graphs look, they are still sitting on bad data with broken processes with results that are providing false transparency.

After seeing these challenges firsthand by speaking with numerous IT and Finance Executives over the last few years, ComSci sought to address the real issue: replacing broken financial systems with an efficient, scalable web-based production system that also provides business intelligence (BI) to both IT management and the consumers of IT Services i.e. business managers.

Our customers are telling us that ComSci is different than the rest in this marketplace as we are “Financial Management people who build great production-ready software products – instead of BI software builders who are trying to learn IT Financial Management.”

This means a lot to us. We have sat on your side of the desk and have experienced the pain and frustration of the budgeting, cost modeling, and rate development process as well as the pressures to provide timely and accurate financial reporting and business metrics.  This is why we built a product and deliver a solution that addresses the inefficient and costly in-house production processes and systems while also providing clear, concise and robust metrics around the value of IT services.  We are focused on helping CIOs and CFOs of IT with budgeting/forecasting, service costing, rate development, consumption planning and the monthly production of the Bill of IT.

We like the recent “buzz” being created in this space as this certainly validates the need in the marketplace and substantiates what we’re doing at ComSci – providing scalable ITFM cloud-based software solutions to assist our clients in overcoming their challenges to effectively measure and communicate the value of IT to the business. We are unique as we not only deliver excellent financial and business intelligence, our cloud-based software can replace existing financial costing, budgeting and chargeback systems within the enterprise, thereby increasing efficiencies and reducing support costs.

*Gartner, Hype Cycle for Governance, Risk and Compliance Technologies, John A. Wheeler, 10 July 2015
**Gartner, Define Your Objectives Before Selecting Chargeback, Showback, Bill of IT or ITFM, Robert Naegle, Barbara Gomolski, 24 February 2015

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.