TBM Consumers

Consumers represent the business units, teams, departments, customers, or other groups that consume 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.

What Consumers help you do

Use Consumers to:

• Allocate solution spend to business units or consumer groups

• Show technology cost by the groups that consume services

• Support showback and chargeback workflows

• Improve cost accountability across the organization

• Review spend by consumer, solution, cost pool, tower, vendor, or cost center

• Support budget, forecast, and planning conversations with business owners

• Explain the business impact of technology services and consumption

Consumer reporting helps teams move from technology delivery to business ownership.

How Consumers fit the TBM model

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

They answer the question: Who consumes 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

This structure helps teams connect technology cost to business usage and accountability.

Consumer structure

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

Common examples include:

• Business units

• Departments

• Cost center groups

• Internal customers

• External customers

• Product groups

• Regions or entities

• Service-consuming 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 consume the service.

Consumer allocation can support:

• Showback reporting

• Chargeback workflows

• Business unit accountability

• Service consumption analysis

• Budget and forecast discussions

• 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 consumption

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

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

This relationship helps teams connect service delivery with business accountability.

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 consume.

Consumer unit cost analysis

Consumer reporting can also support unit cost analysis.

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

Examples include:

Unit cost analysis helps teams:

• Compare service efficiency across periods

• Understand consumption-driven cost changes

• Support showback and chargeback conversations

• Improve planning and forecast discussions

• Benchmark technology service delivery

Reliable unit cost reporting depends on:

• Accurate allocation

• Governed consumption metrics

• Consistent solution structures

• 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

• Investigate vendor, cost center, tower, and cost pool drivers behind consumer spend

• Prepare business-facing reporting for review cycles

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.

Examples include:

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

Recommended practices

Use these practices when working with Consumers:

• Keep Consumer names clear and business-readable

• Align Consumers with how business owners review cost

• Validate Solution allocation before allocating spend to Consumers

• Use measurable allocation bases where possible

• Keep allocation rules consistent across reporting periods

• Review high-value shared services regularly

• Document allocation logic for showback and chargeback conversations

• Use Consumer views to support planning and forecast discussions

• Review unmapped or partially allocated Consumer spend before executive reporting

Good Consumer structure improves accountability and reduces allocation disputes.

Common use cases

Consumers are commonly used for:

• Business unit showback

• Chargeback allocation

• Consumer-level spend reporting

• Service consumption analysis

• Planning and forecasting by business group

• Executive reporting on business accountability

• Cost transparency reviews with business stakeholders

• Product, department, or regional cost review

Troubleshooting Consumer results

If Consumer results do not look correct, check:

• Whether Consumers are defined in master data

• Whether source spend exists for the selected period

• Whether Cost Pool, Tower, and Solution allocation is complete

• Whether Consumer allocation rules are configured correctly

• Whether allocation bases use the right source data

• Whether Consumers are duplicated or inconsistently named

• Whether entity, cost center, or ownership mappings are missing

• Whether the selected reporting period has completed allocation processing

If totals still do not match expectations, use Cost Explorer or the relevant allocation view to trace the spend path from Cost Pools through Solutions into Consumers.

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