Is cloud cost accountability part of your business model?
Deciding between showback and chargeback is a big decision for any organization. When IT budgets are centralized and owned by IT, business units don’t feel the impact of IT costs, which are often viewed as a free and unlimited resource. Chargebacks and IT finance integration drive accountability to the edges of the organization.
Once costs have been allocated and teams have been given visibility, the data is automatically integrated into their internal reporting and financial management systems, and directly charged to their P&L.
Assess your chargeback maturity
As a starting point, consider the following questions:
- Can you see your costs across multiple accounts and providers?
- Is cloud spend allocated based on estimated resources used or actual consumption?
- Do you have a tagging or linked account strategy in place to provide visibility into how expenses are allocated?
- Are teams aware of direct and shared costs based on their actual consumption?
- Are shared organizational costs and commitment-based discounts held centrally or allocated based on consumption?
- Is chargeback reporting integrated automatically into the company’s IT finance tooling?
Chargeback offers business units more than financial accountability — it gives them choices in how their money is spent.