Technology Business Management gives teams a consistent way to explain technology spend, connect costs to value, and manage financial accountability across IT, Finance, FinOps, and business stakeholders.
Yarken uses TBM structures to translate financial data into business-ready views of technology cost. Instead of reviewing spend only by general ledger, account, vendor, or cost center, teams can also analyze spend through cost pools, towers, solutions, and consumers.
Use this page to understand how the TBM section is organized and how each part of the model supports cost transparency, planning, analytics, showback, and chargeback.
What TBM helps you do
Use TBM in Yarken to:
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Categorize technology spend using a common financial and operational structure
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Move from raw transaction data to business-ready cost views
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Analyze spend by cost pools, towers, solutions, and consumers
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Explain what technology costs, who uses it, and where accountability sits
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Support cost transparency and allocation review
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Align IT, Finance, FinOps, and business teams on one operating model
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Improve planning, budgeting, forecasting, showback, and chargeback workflows
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Build consistent analytics and executive reporting from governed cost structures
TBM gives teams a shared language for technology cost. Yarken applies that language across reporting, planning, analytics, governance, and AI-assisted analysis.
How Yarken structures TBM
Yarken uses TBM to organize spend across connected layers.
|
Layer |
What it represents |
Primary view |
|---|---|---|
|
Cost Pools |
The types of technology spend, such as labor, hardware, software, facilities, telecom, and outside services |
Finance view |
|
Towers |
The technology functions supported by the spend, such as compute, storage, network, platform, end user, applications, security, and IT management |
IT view |
|
Solutions |
The applications, services, products, and solution offerings delivered by technology teams |
Business and service view |
|
Consumers |
The business units, teams, or groups consuming the services |
Accountability view |
These layers help teams trace spend from financial source data into technology and business outcomes.
Cost Pools
Cost Pools and Sub Cost Pools represent the finance view of technology spend.
They help teams classify what was purchased or paid for. Examples include internal labor, external labor, outside services, hardware, software, facilities and power, telecom, and other operating or capital costs.
Cost Pools are the foundation for downstream allocation. When spend is categorized correctly at this layer, Yarken can support clearer tower, solution, consumer, showback, and chargeback views.
Towers
Towers and Sub Towers represent the technology view of spend.
They help teams understand which technology functions are supported by the cost. Examples include data center, compute, storage, network, platform, output, end user, applications, delivery, security and compliance, and IT management.
Towers help IT leaders assess cost drivers across the technology operating environment and compare spend across functional service areas.
Solutions
Solutions represent what technology delivers to the organization.
Yarken uses solutions to connect spend to applications, services, products, and solution offerings. This helps teams understand the cost of what is being delivered, not only the cost of the resources used to deliver it.
Solutions help bridge the finance and technology views into a business-facing view that stakeholders can use in planning, portfolio review, service review, and value discussions.
Consumers
Consumers represent the teams, business units, or groups that use technology services.
Consumer views help connect spend to accountability. They support showback, chargeback, budgeting, forecasting, and business-facing cost conversations.
Consumer reporting is most useful when the upstream model is well maintained across cost pools, towers, solutions, allocation logic, and master data.
TBM 5.0 alignment
Yarken supports TBM structures that help organizations work with current TBM practices, including richer classification for cloud, AI, security, and sustainability-related cost where applicable.
Yarken also supports environments that need to operate across taxonomy versions during transition. This helps teams adopt updated TBM structures without losing continuity in reporting and governance.
How TBM connects to Yarken features
TBM is not limited to one dashboard. It supports multiple areas of the platform.
|
Area |
How TBM supports it |
|---|---|
|
Cost Transparency |
Shows spend across cost pools, towers, solutions, and consumers |
|
Cost Explorer |
Helps trace how spend moves through the model and where costs remain unmapped |
|
Analytics |
Provides reusable fields and dimensions for custom analysis |
|
Planning |
Gives budget and forecast work a consistent cost structure |
|
Showback and Chargeback |
Connects cost to consumers and supports accountability workflows |
|
Business Case |
Helps compare planned investment, spend, and value using governed cost context |
|
Ask Yarken |
Uses model context to answer spend and allocation questions more clearly |
A consistent TBM model improves the quality of every downstream view.
When to use this section
Use the Technology Business Management section when you need to:
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Learn how TBM structures work in Yarken
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Understand Cost Pools, Towers, and Solutions
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Explain how spend flows through the model
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Prepare for cost transparency reporting
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Review how allocations support consumer reporting
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Improve reporting consistency across IT and Finance
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Support TBM, FinOps, planning, showback, or chargeback workflows
Start with the core taxonomy pages, then move into Cost Transparency and Cost Explorer when you need to analyze the model in practice.
Recommended practices
Use these practices when working with TBM in Yarken:
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Keep source financial data clean before mapping spend into TBM layers
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Map cost pools before reviewing downstream tower and solution reporting
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Use governed default taxonomy where it fits the operating model
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Add custom taxonomy components only when they improve reporting clarity
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Review unmapped or partially mapped spend before using results in executive reporting
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Keep terminology consistent across Finance, IT, FinOps, and business teams
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Use Cost Explorer to validate how spend moves through the model
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Use Cost Transparency dashboards for recurring leadership and stakeholder reviews
Strong TBM discipline improves transparency, trust, and decision quality.
Next step
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