TBM Done Right: Translating Tech Spend into Business Language Your CFO Understands

CFOs reject IT budgets because CIOs speak technology, not business. Technology Business Management (TBM) translates tech into business language.

## What TBM Actually Means

Bad IT budget: "$2.4M for infrastructure upgrades"
Good TBM budget: "$2.4M to increase order processing capacity by 40%, supporting revenue growth from $50M to $70M"

## The TBM Framework

**Step 1: Map IT Costs to Business Services**

IT Spending → Business Services → Business Value
- $1.2M infrastructure → E-commerce platform → $50M revenue
- $840K security → Risk reduction → Avoid $4.5M breach cost
- $620K analytics → Decision speed → 30% faster time-to-market

**Step 2: Calculate Unit Economics**

Examples:
- Cost per transaction: $0.23
- Cost per customer: $12/month
- Cost per employee supported: $180/month

Track quarterly. If unit cost increases while volume is flat, you have efficiency problem.

**Step 3: Showback and Chargeback**

**Showback** (informational):
- Marketing IT costs: $42K/month
- Sales IT costs: $38K/month
- Transparency without billing

**Chargeback** (actual billing):
- Business units "pay" for IT services
- Creates cost accountability
- Reduces frivolous requests

## How to Present IT Budget in TBM Terms

Old way: "We need $800K for cloud migration"

TBM way:
- **Business driver**: Support 40% customer growth
- **Current state**: Infrastructure at 78% capacity, will hit limits in 6 months
- **Investment**: $800K cloud migration
- **Business outcome**: Scale to support $70M revenue with no infrastructure constraints
- **Unit economics**: Reduce cost per transaction from $0.28 to $0.19 (32% improvement)
- **ROI**: $800K investment enables $20M revenue growth, pays back in 14 months

CFOs approve budgets they understand. TBM makes IT spending comprehensible.