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Solutions › IT Financial Management (ITFM)

IT Financial Management - ITFM: Run IT Like a Business

Control IT costs, optimize investments and align spending to business strategy with enterprise-grade ITFM software built for performance and results.

Nicus ITFM Platform
IT financial management (ITFM) team at work

Make IT Spending Decisions at the Speed of Business

ITFM teams are often bogged down by spreadsheets, software performance issues and aggregated data that lacks detail behind what’s driving costs. The result: delayed decisions that don’t deliver the expected impact—and IT budgets that are misaligned with business priorities.

Built for scale, Nicus ITFM software flexes to how your organization delivers IT, to provide actionable insights and full IT cost transparency and control.

  • Track IT spend at a granular level for more informed decisions that drive real results
  • Run forecasts in minutes, not days, with our high-performance cost modeling engine
  • Compare scenarios side-by-side for instant visibility into operational and financial impacts
  • Get a comprehensive view into AI and cloud costs to measure ROI of digital transformation initiatives

Case Study: Fortune 500 Insurance Firm Reclaims 2,000 Hours while Elevating IT’s Strategic Position in the Business

ITFM professional working on projections

What Is IT Financial Management (ITFM)?

IT financial management (ITFM) is a structured framework for managing, optimizing and aligning IT costs with business strategy. At the core of ITFM is full financial transparency that ensures every IT dollar is accounted for and delivers measurable value.

Key elements of ITFM include:

  • Collecting and integrating financial data into a cost model that reflects how the company delivers IT
  • Allocating IT spend to business units, applications and services
  • Using key metrics like total cost of ownership (TCO) and unit costs to enable value-driven decisions
  • Budgeting and forecasting to align future spend with business objectives and demand

eBook: Dispelling the 8 Biggest ITFM & TBM Misconceptions

Use Financial Transparency Effectively to Optimize Both IT Cost and Value
%

62

of CIOs do not believe that there is adequate transparency of IT costs, contributions and performance

%

26

of IT organizations clearly define IT products/services and their associated business value

%

7

of CFOs consistently apply good benefits realization practices, including benefits harvesting.

%

20

of the IT operating budget is wasted money (CEOs and CFOs belief)

Young professional working on ITFM Challenges

Challenges in ITFM

Agile IT decision-making demands visibility and control over IT spending, but the volume and complexity of data involved in the process often get in the way. The biggest challenges for companies:

  • Manual processes: Siloed data makes importing, validating and mapping costs time-consuming
  • Lack of detailed visibility: High-level cost aggregation hides true cost drivers, so cost optimizations don’t deliver the expected savings
  • Slow processing times: Running cost models and forecasts takes days, delaying mission-critical decisions and limiting the ability to compare multiple scenarios
  • Opaque billing: Lack of transparency in showback/chargeback leads to disputes and resistance, which can be mitigated through effective IT financial management
  • Demonstrating valueIT teams struggle to justify IT budgets when costs don’t clearly link to outcomes

eBook: 4 Steps to a Healthier ITFM Practice Beyond Spreadsheets

ITFM team working on a customer plan

Nicus: The Smarter ITFM Solution

Nicus goes beyond traditional ITFM tools to deliver fast, accurate insights into IT spending and value. The result is a single source of truth for IT costs and decision levers that drive measurable results.

  • High-speed cost modeling, budgeting and forecasting: Generate forecasts in minutes and compare multiple scenarios for agile IT decision-making and cost optimization
  • Defensible, drill-down data: General ledger integration ensures accuracy and preserves operational detail to show true cost drivers and cost-cutting impacts
  • Automated data import and mapping: Automatically import and map validated data to minimize manual effort and errors
  • Comprehensive visibility: Nicus captures commonly overlooked costs like labor and support to deliver more accurate TCO and unit costs, all in one centralized platform
ITFM dashboard with data visualisation

Nicus: The Modern ITFM Platform on ServiceNow

Nicus is the only comprehensive ITFM solution built for speed and performance running natively on ServiceNow, enabling organizations to transform their IT expenditure management.

  • Eliminate costly, loosely integrated point solutions and make ServiceNow your single source of truth for IT cost data
  • Empower ServiceNow users with accurate, detailed financial data
  • Leverage the investment you have already made in ServiceNow, including the CMDB to drive cost allocation insights
Blog: Why IT Financial Management and ServiceNow Are Better Together

ITFM Solution Capabilities

    • 24/7 real-time cost modeling and forecasting
    • Reporting and visualization
    • Role-based dashboards and reports
    • IT showback and chargeback
    • Internal and external benchmarking
    • Collaborate on budgets concurrently
    • Cash, ops, and revenue views
    • Multiple governance view (R/G/T, supply/demand, LOB consumption)
    • Run multiple forecasts concurrently with compare and versioning
    • Automatic depreciation calculations for capital asset purchases
    • Multi-currency support
    • Run natively on ServiceNow platform

We started realizing hard and soft benefits within months of implementation, and the Nicus ITFM Suite has provided us with a solid foundation as we start to look at our IT services and applications through an enterprise lens

Insurance Company and Nicus Customer

Nicus ITFM Products

Recognized by Gartner, Nicus offers industry-leading ITFM software that helps companies achieve true IT cost transparency and ensures every IT dollar delivers value, maximizing return on investment.

Nicus ITFM Platform

Extend transparency to every intersection of IT and the business, reveal unseen opportunities to optimize spend and empower decision-makers with insights they can act on. (encompasses Cost Transparency and IT Planning products).

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Nicus Cost Transparency

Establish accurate, fully-burdened cost structures for everything IT delivers – allowing technology leaders to eliminate doubt, rationalize spend, and expose opportunity.

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Nicus IT Planning

Build detailed IT budgets and forecasts quickly and accurately. See how and why today’s funds are being spent, and how tomorrow’s investments can drive new value.

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Next Steps

See how Nicus can help you advance ITFM maturity

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Further ITFM Resources

Blogs
ITFM vs. FinOps Part 2: How FinOps and IT Financial Management Work Together
ITFM vs. FinOps Part 2: How FinOps and IT Financial Management Work Together

Analysts at McKinsey estimate that companies using FinOps, a cloud financial management discipline focused on cloud cost management, can reduce cloud costs by up […]

Read More
OnDemand Webinars
ITFM & TBM Maturity Assessment & Roadmap
ITFM & TBM Maturity Assessment & Roadmap

How do you grow an ITFM or TBM program to full maturity? This interactive webinar explains the entire process and what to expect along […]

Read More
Blogs
State of Arizona Reinvests $16.6 Million Running Government at the Speed of Business
State of Arizona Reinvests $16.6 Million Running Government at the Speed of Business

Background Governor Doug Ducey has a clear vision for Arizona. He wants it to be the number one place to live, work, play, recreate, […]

Read More

Frequently Asked Questions

Can’t I manage IT finances in spreadsheets?

Spreadsheet applications hold a special place in the hearts of IT Finance professionals, but the core capabilities of these applications don’t extend to accommodate the rigors of today’s financial management task load. Many organizations with IT budgets under $25-40M have operated within these spreadsheets successfully for years. As technology spend and data sets grow larger, the complexity of analyses increases, and the practical utility we once loved now hinders the ability to track, report, forecast, and manage IT spend. The following common challenges may help your organization determine if it’s time to consider an effective IT financial management solution:

  • Data is not centralized.
  • Files are shared via email, and integrating and tracking multiple versions can be budensome (which can easily be streamlined through automation).
  • Complex models take a long time to open and run.
  • Tedious, manual updates are limiting resources and efficiencies.

Read more in this blog.

Where do corporate planning tools fit in ITFM?

Corporate planning tools can be very powerful for corporate finance needs and many organizations question the need for an “additional budgeting and forecasting tool.” There are a few shortfalls of these tools, however, that become very apparent in the journey to ITFM success.

  • Corporate planning tools rarely offer the level of granularity needed to effectively build an IT budget, forcing organizations to maintain the “real” IT budget offline, typically in spreadsheets.
  • Corporate planning tools track multi-year assets, but rarely track detailed information such as annual price increases- which can impede annual budgeting exercises. Calculating future expense streams happens automatically in an ITFM solution.
  • Corporate planning tools provide variances at a cost center or account level which can lead to many hours wasted digging through various data sources and matching data within spreadsheets. Track actuals against specific forecasted items with an ITFM solution.

Read more in this blog.

What if my data is dirty or incomplete?

ITFM programs rarely have the luxury perfect data (or even great data) on day one, and it’s in no way a prerequisite. Most organizations start with “good enough” and improve over time.

In fact, attempting to rectify bad data beforehand – without any context to guide your effort – is often an open-ended and chaotic exercise. It’s hard to know what’s missing or broken until you have a reason to look. The framework provided by an ITFM program makes the process far more straightforward.

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