The TBM Council began as a biannual executive summit for CIOs sponsored by Apptio, which develops technology business management software as a service applications. In 2012, Apptio founded the TBM Council as a non-profit organization with a mission to identify and promote industry best practices for running technology organizations like a business. Upon incorporation, Apptio's Chief Marketing Officer became the president and Chief Information Officers from Cisco and First American became co-chairs of the board of directors. In 2013, the Council held its first industry conference in Seattle and expanded its program into Europe in 2014. In 2015, the Council appointed Mike Brown, Vice President, Global Information Technology at ExxonMobil as its chairman of the board, created industry workgroups to define standards and launched a private and public sector IT COST Commission with the United States Federal Government. In 2016, the Council released their book and concluded the year-long IT COST Commission by making 21 recommendations to improve transparency, reduce waste and increase the efficiency of IT spending within the US Government.
TBM Framework and Index
The TBM Framework for “running IT with greater business acumen” is designed to provide “a shared decision-making model for technology and business leaders” and a structure for IT executives to have “conversations with the CEO and the board of directors about the value of IT investments.” The TBM Council publishes an agreed-upon set of TBM best practices with the goal of helping business technology leaders benchmark their success in those practices using the TBM Index. The index follows the structure of the TBM Framework. It is an interactive survey with open participation and is published in the TBM Council's iPad ebook, Technology Business Management: How Innovative Technology Leaders Apply Business Acumen to Drive Value, and on the TBM Council's website. The goal of the TBM Index is to provide “an industry-validated benchmark on the state of technology business management.” The information gathered is designed to help the council understand how technology business management varies by industry, geography, and IT operating model, in order to make recommendations to companies around the world. The TBM Council's work has been credited with helping some enterprises identify CIOs as those “most responsible for driving digital innovation and change.” For example, Clorox Co. has been using the TBM Council's best practices and benchmarks to help establish the value of IT services and make the case for further investments in IT.
The TBM Council's founding board of directors include Mike Benson, executive vice president and CIO of DirecTV; Tim Campos, CIO of Facebook; Don Duet, co-head technology division, Goldman Sachs; Sunny Gupta, CEO of Apptio; Rebecca Jacoby, CIO of Cisco; Ralph Loura, senior vice president, Clorox Co.; Tom Murphy, CIO, University of Pennsylvania ; Jim Scholefield, CTO, The Coca-Cola Company; Robert Webb, CITO, Etihad Airways ; and Carol Zierhoffer, CIO of Xerox.
Research
In 2013, the TBM Council commissioned Forrester Consulting to research the impact of business imperatives on the metrics CIOs use to convey the performance and contribution of technologies toward meeting business goals. The research found that most business leaders don't understand what IT departments do and don't know what the IT budget is or how the IT department's success is measured. Most business leaders surveyed said that IT departments had a 60% bigger budget than they actually did. CIOs said they spend 5% of the organization's revenue, but business leaders thought it was 8% of revenue.
TBM Conference
In 2010, the TBM Council held its first virtual TBM Summit, with approximately 100 CIOs and IT leaders participating. The TBM Council held its first conference in November 2013 in Seattle, attended by approximately 400 IT leaders. At the conference, eBay received the council's first Operational Excellence Award, given to organizations that employ “internal and external IT transparency to improve the cost-effectiveness of the services IT delivers to the wider organization.” The second conference is scheduled for October 2014 in Miami Beach.
