TBM Consumers

Consumers represent the business units, teams, departments, product groups, regions, or other groups that use technology services.

Use Consumers to connect technology spend to business accountability. Consumer views help teams understand who uses technology services, how much those services cost, and where showback, chargeback, planning, and forecasting conversations should happen.

Consumers are the business accountability layer of the TBM model.

How Consumers fit the TBM model

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

They answer the question: Who uses the technology service or capability?

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 is allocated to Consumers where the model supports it

5. Consumer results become available in dashboards, Analytics, showback, chargeback, and planning workflows

Consumer structure

A Consumer can represent any business-facing group that needs cost visibility.

Common examples include:

• Business units

• Departments

• Cost center groups

• Internal groups

• Product groups

• Regions or entities

• Service-using teams

The right structure depends on how the organization wants to review, govern, and allocate technology cost.

Consumer allocation

Consumer allocation assigns solution spend to the groups that use the service.

Consumer allocation can support showback reporting, chargeback workflows, service usage analysis, budget and forecast discussions, and financial planning by consumer group.

Before allocating spend to Consumers, make sure the upstream model is complete enough to support meaningful allocation.

Prerequisites for Consumer reporting

Before relying on Consumer reporting, confirm that:

• Consumers are defined in master data

• Relevant source spend has been loaded

• Cost Pool mapping is complete for the selected period

• Tower allocation is complete where required

• Solution spend has been allocated for the selected period

• Consumer allocation rules or mappings are configured

• Entities, cost centers, and ownership fields are consistent where used

Consumer reporting is only as reliable as the upstream model and allocation logic.

Relationship with Solutions

Solutions represent what technology delivers.

Consumers represent who uses it.

For example:

• A collaboration service may be allocated to departments based on users or usage

• A cloud platform may be allocated to product teams based on usage

• A business application may be allocated to consumer groups based on ownership, headcount, transactions, or another allocation basis

• A shared infrastructure service may be allocated across multiple consumer groups

Relationship with showback and chargeback

Consumers are central to showback and chargeback.

Use Consumer views for showback when teams need visibility into allocated technology costs without billing or recovery workflows.

Use Consumer views for chargeback when costs need to be assigned, recovered, or governed through a formal allocation process.

Consumer-level reporting gives business owners the context they need to understand the technology services they use.

Consumer unit cost analysis

Consumer reporting can support unit cost analysis.

Unit cost helps teams understand the cost of delivering a technology service relative to a measurable usage unit.

Reliable unit cost reporting depends on accurate allocation, governed usage metrics, consistent solution structures, and complete consumer mapping.

Relationship with Analytics and Cost Transparency

Consumer spend can be reviewed in Cost Transparency dashboards, Consumer Showback, and Analytics.

Use these views to review spend by consumer, compare consumer spend across periods, analyze which solutions drive consumer cost, and investigate vendor, cost center, tower, and cost pool drivers behind consumer spend.

Use Cost Explorer when you need to validate how spend reaches Consumers from upstream TBM layers.

Allocation basis examples

Consumer allocation should reflect how services are used or governed.

The chosen basis should be explainable to the Consumer receiving the cost.

Next step

• Cost Transparency Overview

Related content

• Technology Business Management

• TBM Cost Pools

• TBM Towers

• TBM Solutions

• Applications, Products, Services, and Consumers

• Consumer Showback

• Chargeback and Governance

• Cost Explorer