Greg Guye, CEO of Keyrus in South Africa, attended the European Technology Business Management (TBM) Summit, held in London, to reinforce the company's commitment to help local enterprises deliver significant returns on their shared services investments. In a world where technology capabilities and costs continue to spiral upwards, it is more important than ever for organisations to ensure they are obtaining a strong return on investment (ROI). Since technology is intrinsically linked to every department, it is the ideal starting point from which to seek to improve costs, boost efficiencies or drive innovation.
Guye points out that TBM is a decision-making discipline for maximising the business value of IT spending, helping the enterprise to create transparency for the cost, quality, and value of IT services, and driving alignment between technology supply and business demand. “Keyrus and its experts in South Africa have been championing the principles of TBM since early 2000. They have recognised the increased need for CIOs to be able to manage conflicting priorities by creating and automating IT cost transparency. TBM is acknowledged as providing the foundation on which local business leaders can craft an enterprise-level solution that will deliver true cost transparency for their shared services investments,” he says.
“TBM itself is focused on the process of managing technology costs within large enterprises. These costs are allocated to a catalogue of products and services produced by IT, for consumption by other business units. However, the principles of TBM can be applied to the entire continuum of shared services, placing TBM front and centre when it comes to improving cost transparency within a business.” The recent TBM Summit was attended by more than 300 of the globe's most strategic, visionary and successful technology leaders, clearly highlighting the significant impacts these principles are having on global organisations. “It certainly was a worthwhile event to attend, with a number of global enterprises sharing their stories of the impact TBM has had on their businesses. Furthermore, it was interesting to note the effect new approaches like agile development are having on the industry, in respect of how this impacts costing and the management of budgets,” Guye explains.
"From this perspective, it was eye-opening to have delegates take us through their journey of becoming highly digitised enterprises, and learning the role that TBM plays in this space. Agility, after all, is about being flexible, fast and having the ability to change course or adapt a business model rapidly.”
When it comes to the focus on digital transformation and agility, he continues, one of the key points made by delegates is that TBM is no longer simply about costing or pricing something in terms of what division is using which application or service. Today, says Guye, it is about pricing a platform, product or service specifically in terms of the business unit that is consuming it.
“In effect, it is now about asking not only what the price of a new feature is, but also factoring in what the return is that the customer gets as a result of having that feature available to them. This is a critical distinction in respect of TBM.”
Asked what the key take-outs were from the TBM Summit, Guye suggests that many delegates indicated a desire to utilise TBM to provide direction with regard to how best to standardise their approach to shared services costs. “The recognition of the importance of current technology trends such as digital transformation and the move to an agile approach were also noted as crucial issues that play a major role in the application of modern TBM principles. However, most important of all is the realisation by enterprises that the benefits of TBM – such as cost transparency, benchmarking, agile planning, vendor optimisation and cloud cost management – can be applied across the entire enterprise and need not be confined to technology alone,” he adds.
Already the local leader in the application of TBM, Keyrus SA has further strengthened its leadership in Management and Transformation following Greg Guye's completion of the internationally recognised TBM examination. Having certifications of this nature forms a crucial part of its offering and positions Keyrus as the partner of choice in enabling more South African enterprises to benefit from the powerful principles of the TBM framework.