TBM Solutions

Solutions represent what technology delivers to the organization.

Use Solutions to connect spend to applications, services, products, and solution offerings. This helps Finance, IT, FinOps, and business stakeholders understand the cost of delivered technology capabilities, not only the cost of the resources used to provide them.

Solutions turn TBM reporting into a business-facing view of technology value.

What Solutions help you do

Use Solutions to:

• Analyze spend by application, service, product, or solution offering

• Connect technology cost to what the business consumes

• Support service portfolio and product portfolio reporting

• Review cost by solution type, category, and name

• Prepare spend for consumer-level reporting, showback, and chargeback

• Support business cases, planning, forecasting, and analytics

• Improve conversations between technology owners and business stakeholders

Solutions help teams explain what technology spend is delivering.

How Solutions fit the TBM model

Solutions sit after Cost Pools and Towers in the TBM cost flow.

They answer the question: What technology capability, application, service, or product does this spend support?

The typical flow is:

1. Financial data is mapped into Cost Pools and Sub Cost Pools

2. Cost Pool spend is allocated into Towers and Sub Towers

3. Tower spend is connected to Solutions

4. Solution spend can be allocated to Consumers where the model supports it

5. The results become available in Cost Transparency, Analytics, showback, chargeback, and planning workflows

This structure helps teams move from technology operating costs into business-facing service and product views.

Solution hierarchy

Solutions are organized into a hierarchy that supports service and product reporting.

This hierarchy gives teams the flexibility to align the standard TBM structure with the organization's own service and operating model.

Solution classes

Solutions are commonly delivered through three broad classes.

Use the class that best describes how the technology capability is delivered and consumed.

Delivery Solutions

Delivery Solutions support the planning, development, operation, support, and governance of technology work.

Common areas include:

• Strategy and planning

• Business and technology consulting

• Innovation and research

• Project and agile management

• Vendor management

• Application development

• Integration and migration

• Testing and release management

• Operations, incident, problem, and change management

• Service desk, training, and user support

• Security, compliance, identity, vulnerability, and resilience services

Use Delivery Solutions when the spend supports how technology work is planned, built, run, secured, or supported.

Infrastructure Solutions

Infrastructure Solutions cover the foundational services required to run technology workloads.

Common areas include:

• Compute

• Data center

• Network

• Storage

• Connectivity and access services

• Backup, archive, and recovery

• Mainframe, virtual, distributed, and cloud infrastructure

Use Infrastructure Solutions when spend supports the core platforms and resources that enable applications, services, and products to operate.

Platform Solutions

Platform Solutions provide the application, data, integration, and development foundations used by other applications or services.

Common areas include:

• Application hosting

• Development and integration platforms

• ERP foundation platforms

• API and messaging services

• Content and records management

• Search and media services

• Data platforms

• Databases

• Data warehousing

• Analytics and visualization tools

• Machine learning and intelligent automation platforms

Use Platform Solutions when spend supports shared technology capabilities used by multiple products, services, or applications.

Workplace Solutions

Workplace Solutions enable employees and end users to work, communicate, collaborate, and access enterprise systems.

Common areas include:

• Client computing

• Mobile devices

• Virtual workspaces

• Communication and collaboration tools

• Productivity software

• Printing and peripheral services

• Wired, wireless, and remote access connectivity

Use Workplace Solutions when spend supports end-user technology, employee productivity, or workforce collaboration.

Business Solutions

Business Solutions support customer-facing or business-facing capabilities.

Common areas include:

• Product management

• Sales and marketing

• Commerce and customer engagement

• Manufacturing and delivery

• Customer service

• Industry-specific business capabilities

Use Business Solutions when technology spend directly supports the products, services, or capabilities the business uses to serve customers and operate commercially.

Shared and Corporate Solutions

Shared and Corporate Solutions support internal corporate functions.

Common areas include:

• Finance

• Workforce and HR

• Vendor and procurement

• Health, safety, security, and environmental management

• Risk, audit, and compliance

• Legal

• Property and facilities

• Corporate communications

Use Shared and Corporate Solutions when technology spend supports internal business operations and shared services.

Solution Offerings

Solution Offerings are the organization-specific services, products, or applications configured in Yarken.

They help connect standard TBM solution structures to the way your organization actually delivers and reports technology.

Solution Offerings can support:

• Service ownership

• Product ownership

• Application and platform reporting

• Consumption basis and unit-of-measure reporting

• Consumer-level allocation

• Chargeback and showback workflows

• Custom dashboard and analytics views

A well-maintained solution offering structure improves business-facing reporting and accountability.

Relationship with Cost Pools and Towers

Cost Pools explain what type of spend exists.

Towers explain which technology function the spend supports.

Solutions explain what technology capability is delivered.

For example:

• Compute, storage, network, and platform spend may support an infrastructure or platform solution

• Application Tower spend may support a business application or shared platform solution

• End User Tower spend may support workplace, collaboration, or client computing solutions

• Security and compliance spend may support identity, vulnerability, risk, or resilience services

This relationship helps teams trace spend from finance classification into technology delivery and business consumption.

Relationship with Consumers

Solutions are the bridge between technology delivery and consumption.

Once solution spend is defined, it can be allocated to Consumers where the model supports consumer-level reporting.

This supports:

• Showback

• Chargeback

• Business unit reporting

• Cost accountability

• Service consumption analysis

• Planning and forecasting conversations

Consumer reporting works best when solution structures and allocation logic are maintained consistently.

Relationship with Cost Transparency and Analytics

Solutions appear in Cost Transparency dashboards, drilldown reports, and Analytics.

Use Solution reporting to:

• Review spend by application, service, product, or solution offering

• Compare solution spend across periods

• Investigate cost drivers by vendor, cost center, tower, or cost pool

• Support business-facing service reviews

• Prepare views for showback, chargeback, and planning

Use Cost Explorer when you need to validate how spend reaches a Solution from upstream layers.

Recommended practices

Use these practices when working with Solutions:

• Keep solution naming clear and business-readable

• Use Solution Offerings to match the organization's service and product structure

• Maintain ownership fields where available

• Avoid creating duplicate or overlapping solution names

• Review high-spend solutions regularly

• Validate upstream Cost Pool and Tower mapping before reviewing Solution results

• Align solution structures with showback, chargeback, planning, and service review needs

• Use Cost Explorer to investigate unexpected solution spend

Good Solution structure improves business-facing cost clarity.

Common use cases

Solutions are commonly used for:

• Application and service cost reporting

• Product and platform cost analysis

• Service portfolio review

• Business-facing technology reporting

• Showback and chargeback preparation

• Planning and forecasting by service or product

• Business case analysis

• Cost Transparency drilldowns

• Executive reporting on technology value

Troubleshooting Solution results

If Solution results do not look correct, check:

• Whether upstream Cost Pool and Tower mapping is complete

• Whether Solution Offerings are configured correctly

• Whether solution names, types, and categories are used consistently

• Whether allocation rules are mapping spend to the expected solution

• Whether consumer allocation depends on missing or incomplete Solution mapping

• Whether source spend exists for the selected period

• Whether duplicate Solution Offerings are splitting spend unexpectedly

If totals still do not match expectations, use Cost Explorer to trace the spend path from Cost Pools and Towers into Solutions.

Next step

• TBM Consumers

Related content

• Technology Business Management

• TBM Cost Pools

• TBM Towers

• TBM Taxonomy

• Solution Spend

• Cost Explorer

• Cost Transparency Overview