Case Study: Cargill becomes a value-driven IT leader and saves $20M with Apptio

Demystifying IT elevates Cargill team to leadership role

Cargill, the $107B, 150,000-employee global agribusiness, faced a major IT challenge: decentralized spending, manual processes, and limited cost visibility left IT explaining costs to the business instead of driving strategy. Running a billion-dollar IT organization without real-time analytics or standardized financials made forecasting and value-based decision-making difficult across many separate IT teams.

Cargill implemented Apptio TBM and Apptio IT Planning to centralize IT financials, introduce a granular bill of IT, and give 130 business relationship managers what‑if tools to own costs and drive value. The shift produced real-time planning and accountability, more accurate forecasting, and over $20M in savings in two years (including $5M from improved server cost allocation), while repositioning IT from order-taker to trusted strategic leader.

Cargill

James Pleis

IT Finance Lead for Global IT