Case Study: Great-West Life achieves IT cost transparency and over $7M in savings with Apptio

Great-West Life embraces TBM to reinvent IT

Great‑West Life’s Information Services was wrestling with an opaque, spreadsheet‑driven chargeback model that made IT costs a “black box” for the business. With cost pools and general‑ledger allocations unable to reflect the complex, shared nature of modern IT, executives and business units spent time arguing over allocations instead of focusing on technology’s value—a problem the company set out to solve 18 months ago.

The company adopted TBM and Apptio (Bill of IT, IT Planning, Cost Transparency, SaaS Insights) to create granular chargebacks, drive transparency, and run IT as a service‑oriented business. Results included automated reporting and elimination of 500+ spreadsheets, training 200+ users, ~50% less TBM prep time, multimillion‑dollar consumption optimizations (examples: ~$7M, $2.5M and $4M reductions), funding for digital initiatives (Office 365 rollout to 16,000 employees, cloud and infrastructure modernizations), and stronger alignment between IT and business strategy.

Great-West Life

Deanna Johnson

Director, IS Reporting and Analysis