Technology Business Management – Eileen Wade, TBM

This is texturing TV. Hey everyone, welcome back to Tech shark TV. I've got a really great new guest that we haven't had on before for the head of an organization that we haven't covered before but let me introduce you also I lean Wade.

Hi Eileen. How are you? Hi, Alan.

I'm great. Hello Community. It's nice to be here.

Thanks for welcoming me. It's our pleasure. So Eileen, I I hope I didn't embarrass you would or that you why next expectation, but why don't you give people a little background about about yourself and your organization and we can go from there.

Yeah. Now I'm happy to thanks for thanks for just I'm super excited about this opportunity to talk about the technology business management Council and a recent research report that we have released on technology business management or TBM. You'll hear by hear me talk about TBM for the rest of the conversation.

So I'm the general manager of the TBM Council the TV and Council we are coming on our 11th year. We are a non-profit that Is has over 10,000 members globally primarily most of our members do come from North America, but we have growing membership in Europe and in Southeast Asia and Australia New Zealand, Japan. We're very excited India.

So we're definitely you know, and I'll talk about a couple of the reasons. We see that membership growing but the TBM Council was founded by apatio actually and after you still to this day sits as our technology advisor our Tech advisor Um the TBM Council we have a mission that is to advance the discipline of TBM. So we don't talk products or Solutions or things along those lines.

We are all about the discipline of TBM and educating Tech Finance leaders, and you know Cloud experts Cloud Engineers on TBM and the discipline we do that through Three core pillars or our mandates if you will and those are we do it through an education Series. So we've offer a variety of education courses both certifications as well as primers. We also offer and we do it through collaboration events.

So whether that's thankfully back to being in person some in-person events small and large as well as a lot of virtual engagements, so we offer a monthly TBM Tuesday webinar where we bring leaders and practitioners on to share their stories and then also a secure virtual platform for the members to engage with themselves, so that Can just Reach Out directly start chat boards create their own communities engage with each other around the globe and then the most critical part that the TBM Council has offered the community from its very beginning was actually standards and the standards development. That is the foundation to a strong technology business management office or practice in an organization. So love it good stuff.

So I lean and I and maybe there was a lot of information there for me to digest I apologize maybe so much better. Well, would you work on our videos? But so but the main goal of the technology.

Of the TBM. Yeah, right what we have what just a sentence? What what's it?

What's the main push here TV? And so TV on the discipline or TV on the council or both? You wouldn't mind give me both.

Okay. So the TVM discipline the mission of the TBM discipline the main the main I guess benefits of TBM if you have that if you adopt and start to practice TBM inside, your organization is it gives you better strategies and more value it basically proves the value of your technology Investments. It brings those silos down removes.

The emotion increases trust across business. You just an organizations. Everyone knows that technology now, every company is a technology company because every company has had to go to a digital focused, you know engagement whether you're be to see and TVM is the way that a CIO can manage the business of technology and now We actually see more and more that the TBM office actually sits in accounting or Finance reporting up to the CFO.

Not even through the CIO now, sometimes we see it. Also, there's a growing group that is growing within product and Engineers. So TBM is really that element that allows you to make rapid decisions for to value for your better technology Investments to prove your value of your Investments and prove that the shifts that you're making in your organization are paying out to drive your business your business strategies forward.

Love it. Specifically the council's mission. To advance.

Yes, the council's mission is to advance that discipline. So it's to educate the global technology and financial community on how it is that they can go about and adopt these principles and these standards within within their company and ultimately, you know grow to a point where you are seeking Solutions and you're able to adopt those solutions to make you best of class in executing a TBM a TBM practice across Europe company and TBM also compliments a lot of other disciplines, for example, very very integrated with the finops discipline. There's also scaled agile, you know any the agile the Enterprise agile planning and a lot of the disciplines that support that TBM is really kind of if you look at it, it would be like you're overarching governance that your Tech and finance leaders can use to guide and make sure that all those individual kind of business units and disciplines and strategy structures are moving towards the same goal together and collectively and that quick decisions can be made across that board love it.

Thank you so much. So I know we're going to talk about a survey you guys recently did but I got one other thing. I need to just In terms of laying the foundation here, we mentioned apolio and its connection to the council.

For people maybe aren't familiar with happily are the company. Can you just give it? I mean, I realize you're not the aptly out spokesman obviously so spokesperson.

I'm happy to talk about them though. They're all right good. I mean the council wouldn't be here if it wasn't for up to you and the founders of Aptoide and they're they're generosity and kind of just courage really, um, So TBM or excuse me apto see naturally.

I automatically good after you really is an interesting time for me to actually give this answer because we're facing a lot of the global challenges and economic challenges that we had back at the time then after you was founded. So after you was actually founded in 2007 late 2007 really hit the ground running obviously 2008, but that was right in the middle of a massive recession and really, you know, worldwide global economic challenges after you was created because some of the cio's that our founder Sunny dupta worked with and supported in previous role. He casually asked one time.

Well, what would you like me to focus on what would you like me to do next and money of them said I need a solution. I need something that helps me manage the business of my technology here at the company. I need something that that really shows true technology financial management that can bring down those, you know those silos and the founders went out and did that and they created the first what is now part of the apto stack it's called apto one.

It's really the technology financial management solution within the appdeo stack and they created that but through that they did it through an Advisory Board a CIO. So there was a group of cios some of the early adopters of TBM Ralph Laura who at the time was with the Clorox company Rebecca Jacoby. Who was the CEO at Cisco Larry godic.

Was that American American Financial? Tom Murphy was at amerisourcebergen. I mean just a couple of these founding cios.

They were acting as aptio CIO advisors. They became so passionate about this discipline that was being created. I'm seeing Sunny dots on my face.

Yes was being created that they ended up asking and saying we'd love the actual discipline element to be its own community and to be brought out and the founders of aptio Sunny Gupta Kurt shintoffer. They're the ones that said we're gonna back to you and we're gonna do this and so it was 11 years ago now just this year that the TBM Council was founded as a nonprofit with that pure Focus to only focus on the discipline and advancing that discipline. Eileen thanks so much for the background on both the council after you the whole.

Amy and The story here. I want to jump in now though to the survey that you guys recently did right? so give us tell us yeah, so this is the second annual survey and it's really the state of TBM.

And so we launched our very first inaugural survey in 2021. We chose at that first year to focus on the results responses from the community only so only from our membership and that survey was fantastic, but we did realize that by focusing purely on the Technology Council business. Excuse me, the CBM councils membership.

We were probably looking at a little bit of a skewed perspective because right if they're in the count if they're in TBM Council, they have an interest in TBM therefore, they're probably a little more knowledgeable than a broader group. So in 2022, we set out to expand that and we wanted to grow that response rate. We had over 700 responses of that.

We vetted and validated about 570 just under 570 responses for this survey and it was profound what some of the things that we Thought and a couple of the things that we saw were things that we knew and I've even kind of mentioned right now. Is that TBM and a TBM office if you will really does sit in the technology most of the time it sits in the technology team under the CIO or CTO, but we have a great majority that also sits under accounting and finance as I've mentioned before but one of the greatest things that we saw especially with the digital transformation happening and TBM as we modernize this discipline for the modern Enterprise. We're looking at Cloud financial management.

We're looking at Cloud Financial optimization. And also though agile Enterprise agile planning and that shift from projects to products that is a growing area where TBM is living. So we actually found through this survey that we have a growth of I'm gonna pull out the number about of our respondents about a combined 14% almost 16% sit within the project product management office or engineering so that is that that plays true to what we see TBM doing with managing across all of these different disciplines and kind of being that overarching governance for that executive leadership team to be able to drive strategy.

Excellent. Yeah that you know, and I think it goes to it being integrated into the business exactly not a cost center. It's not some appendage.

You know, it's really as you said in the beginning it and software and you know. It's it's part. It's you can't do digital transformation without it.

And today all these companies are digitally transforming. Yes. Yes, so found just a jumping.

We also found that sometimes often or you know, I'd say maybe more often than not individuals sometimes think that TBM is a discipline meant for only that large Enterprise Global organization, and we know that to not be true but the survey really showed us that we actually saw that there was the majority and I'm looking down at my stats here more than half just over half. We're actually with organizations that had between a thousand and five thousand employees and then you had the larger companies after that. But so it is something that I think it's important to say, you know in your to your community is if you're not a super Regional or a super global company, that's okay TBM is still for you and there are you know, the discipline and the solutions that Help you manage those investment that investment strategy for your technology Investments and TBM can help you in doing that.

So. Very cool what you know, I always find with every survey there's always one thing that makes me shake my head or scratch my head and say wow, right? It's a surprise.

Yeah. What do you think? Was there a big surprise here for you surprising?

It was a great surprise like it was what we Wanted to see but we didn't know if we would see it yet. And that was really going back to the shift of you know, the the shift between two projects to products and that Enterprise agile thinking and that approach that businesses are making we found that actually 69% of our respondents were in the process of either completely adopting an Enterprise agile strategy under their TBM office or moving in that direction. And so that is a massive.

We we thought it would actually be a little lower we knew we'd see it but we didn't think we'd see it at a number of 69% So we were super pleased to see that because again, it just shows that persiveness across the many areas of the organization that are coming together to all Drive strategy together through technology. I love it Eileen. We're running low on time.

But for people who want to maybe grab a copy of the survey report and dive in deeper. Where could they go? Absolutely.

org is our website and you can and I'm gonna do two plugs here. So yes, that's the TBM Council the state of TBM report 2022 report can be found there under our resources. But also I encourage you to become a member.

Our membership is complementary the only investment you make is of your time and how much you want to get out of it and we would just we welcome new members and new voices and there's you know, check out the education series we offer our taxonomy which again goes back to that foundational standards our TBM taxonomy is there for you. So whatever we can do to help you learn more about the discipline advance in the discipline. We're here to help because you know, TBM really is a binding Force across your company if you choose to go down the I love it and just for people who may want to find out more about that.

com is aptio. org. Yes.

Eileen thank you so much for coming on and making us aware of TBM and of this report and thank you for your hard work. Thank you. I appreciate it.

And hopefully this won't be our last conversation. It's no good. Absolutely not I wait from the TBM concert here on texture on TV.

We're gonna take a break we're gonna be right back.