Apptio launches new Insights and Action Plans solution

Apptio has launched 'Insights and Action Plans', a new solution that notifies users of opportunities for optimisation, areas of hidden spend, variance from forecast and more.

The SaaS solutions provider said in a statement that the new solution will be available throughout Apptio's cost analytics applications, starting with Cost Transparency and IT Financial Management, and will include intelligent alerts designed to highlight opportunities for cost savings, increased productivity, risk reduction, and improved data quality.

The scale of technology spending in most modern enterprise organisations has grown at a rate that is nearly impossible to manage manually, according to Apptio. The lack of a business management system can lead to overspending and waste.

To address this, Apptio's new offering automates the identification and delivery of cost saving insights to users. Insights and Action Plans users will receive automated notifications of spend overages, hidden spending, costs associated with closed projects, poor forecast accuracy and more.

This solution works by applying machine learning and a system of rules to users' financial, operational, and vendor data, analysing anomalies and identifying areas of redundancy. Apptio then alerts users to these insights, tracking and manageing progress made against them through Action Plans.

The first set of insights launching today was selected based on input and validation from hundreds of Apptio customers and represent the highest areas of risk for overspending, according to the company.

Apptio CEO Sunny Gupta says, "Today's launch represents one of the most important advancements to Apptio's technology platform since our founding.

"More than a year in the making, our vision is to eliminate the need for our customers to 'insight hunt' within their own data, one of the most pervasive challenges with modern business intelligence and analytics platforms.

After each insight is discovered, users have the option to track and manage progress through dedicated Action Plans. These plans start by assigning work to an insight owner, correlating the associated data with each insight, and automatically updating the plan once action is taken. These Action Plans track the history of each insight and project future efficacy.

Apptio chief product officer Scott Chancellor says, "We've heard from customers who spend a significant amount of time every month attempting to achieve this level of awareness and understanding using spreadsheets or paying a premium for specialised consultants to conduct the work on their behalf.

"Our customers want timely and actionable insights into their IT investments without that level of overhead - we've unlocked this today with Insights and Action Plans.

Additional insights will be added quarterly, examples include notification of unused SaaS licenses, non-critical applications using Tier 1 storage, end of life on mission-critical assets, new development work on retired applications and physical serves running non-production workloads, according to Apptio.

Insights and Action Plans and Action Plans are currently in beta and will be generally available in early 2020, the company states.