Case Study: Royal Bank of Scotland achieves over 20% IT cost takeout and 3–4 hour decision turnarounds with Apptio TBM solutions

How TBM drives business strategy at Royal Bank of Scotland

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), a major UK bank serving personal, commercial and institutional customers, faced a post‑crisis mandate to refocus on customers while dramatically improving cost efficiency. With technology handling over 90% of transactions and a corporate goal to lower its cost/income ratio, RBS needed a way to map IT costs to business consumption, speed decision‑making, and rationalize applications and infrastructure without harming customer innovation.

RBS built a TBM (Technology Business Management) program using Apptio tools and a centralized TBM office, training units across the bank to use cost‑transparency data. The approach delivered more than 20% IT cost takeout, cut business‑case turnaround from weeks to hours, tripled some projected savings from application rationalization, and scaled TBM use across hundreds of users and thousands of reports—freeing capacity for faster, customer‑focused innovation and positioning IT as a strategic partner.

Royal Bank of Scotland

Nasir Omar

Head of Business Management, Technology