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As AI, cloud, and other technology investments soar, organizations have to make investment decisions with increased speed and clarity. Practices like FinOps, IT financial management (ITFM), and strategic portfolio management (SPM) help stakeholders evaluate opportunities and trade-offs for maximum value. But they depend on unified, reliable data. And that’s often where the challenge begins.AI can surface insights from data within specific domains, but important decisions rarely rely on a single source of data. To account for operational and organizational factors as well as financial impact, finance and IT teams have to cut through disconnected systems, outdated data, and inconsistent definitions of value. Real control over technology spend comes from financial intelligence — turning fragmented inputs into actionable, context-rich insights. Apptio technology business management (TBM) solutions deliver that intelligence to technology and finance leaders. By connecting financial, operational, and business data across the enterprise, they give leaders the clarity to make every tech dollar count. Wrangling inputs instead of driving strategyWhen different stakeholders rely on different sources of truth, they don’t share the same perspective on the finance and technology landscape. The CFO sees the cost structures in the ERP system. The CIO sees systems configuration and performance metrics in ITSM and monitoring tools. The business looks at outcomes in CRM and analytics platforms. But no single domain has the holistic understanding needed to balance organizational, operational, and financial priorities.Organizations must also evaluate competing priorities across applications, infrastructure, cloud services, DevOps tools, and workforce investments. Informed trade-offs — such as carving out budget for AI investments without undermining existing capabilities — require visibility into usage patterns, system redundancies, and relative value across all these domains. Without visibility, FinOps, ITFM, and SPM practices can’t fulfill their potential for IT and cloud cost optimization.Instead, siloed data sources force finance teams to spend hours gathering reports from different systems of record and trying to reconcile inconsistent data formats. This practice is not only time- and labor-intensive, but it also opens the org to the risk of flawed forecasts, missed optimization opportunities, and wasted technology spend — potentially costing millions annually.This critical gap reveals why generic BI platforms and DIY tools only go so far. They can’t connect costs back to their sources at a detailed level, making it hard to trace allocations across systems, identify redundancies, or even answer the simplest question: What’s driving our costs?Turning static numbers into actionFinancial intelligence translates domain-specific financial, operational, and business metrics into a shared language of value on which leaders can act. By aggregating, normalizing, and enriching data from ERP systems, cloud platforms, IT service management tools, HR systems, and more, the Financial Intelligence Layer in Apptio supports three critical ITFM, FinOps, and SPM capabilities:Context. Aligning financial, operational, and outcome inputs so that: Cloud spend connects to business impactInfrastructure costs tie to application performanceWorkforce investments link to service deliveryInsights. Connecting cost, usage, performance, and value across the enterprise. For example, mapping AI model usage to ROI can reveal which initiatives do and do not deserve continued investment.Action. Empowering leaders to make informed, coordinated decisions rather than operating in silos.Hyperscalers surface cloud cost optimization insights on their own platforms. Single-function tech platforms like ERP, HR, CRM, and ITSM provide valuable metrics for their specific domains. Apptio TBM solutions go further, delivering the financial context and actionable insights needed to manage technology spend management across all areas: on-premises, multi-cloud, applications, and workforce.Domain expertise for FinOps, ITFM, and SPMRaw numbers don’t tell a story. What matters is structuring data so that it aligns with business goals and enables decision-makers to see patterns, weigh options, and chart the best path forward. Apptio has trained its AI specifically on FinOps, ITFM, and SPM to understand the questions these teams actually need to answer, so TBM teams can work faster and smarter. Apptio TBM solutions ease the cognitive load by automating time-consuming ingestion, mapping, anomaly detection, and enrichment — so people can focus on strategic decisions. Clean, enriched inputs feed forecasting models that anticipate cost trends and surface optimization opportunities. And because Apptio offers ready-to-use cost modeling frameworks and governance, organizations can start realizing value far faster than they can using DIY or open-source tools. The path to financial intelligenceFinancial intelligence starts with clean, contextualized data — but how that data is organized and used is equally critical for optimizing technology spend. TBM principles like cost and consumption allocation, process optimization, and unit economics will help teams translate data into meaningful insights and smarter decisions. Solutions purpose-built for technology spend management are essential. Spreadsheets don’t scale, and domain expertise matters. Apptio TBM solutions deliver enterprise-grade governance, financial context across all tech domains, and AI trained specifically for ITFM, FinOps, and SPM. These are capabilities that hyperscalers — focused on single-cloud optimization and generic BI tools — simply can’t provide at scale.In an era when rapid innovation places a premium on technology spend management, financial intelligence is vital for maximizing budgets. By optimizing the inputs that fuel AI-driven financial workflows, leaders can equip every stakeholder with the confidence and intelligence to steer technology investments with data-driven precision. Learn more here about how the Financial Intelligence Layer in Apptio transforms how enterprises decide, fund, and execute their TBM strategies in the AI era. Ajay Patel is General Manager at Apptio, an IBM Company.Sponsored articles are content produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.