TBM Without a Dedicated Team
TBM Therapy — Issue #4
The Question: Is doing TBM possible without a dedicated team?
What's Going On: I'm new to this space, and everyone keeps telling me it's a multi-year journey.
What I'm Afraid Of: That I overcommit and burn a few years on this without the resources to actually pull it off.
Yes, but how hard it is depends on the size of your organization.
What tends to work for new programs regardless of size is: pick one specific use case (i.e., the most important reason you are doing this), get it in front of the right people, and build traction with the people it helps. Once you've got buy-in and a rhythm going, that's your validation, and it's what justifies expanding to the next use case and eventually the headcount to do it properly. You're not trying to boil the ocean on day one, you just want to start building trust.
Your fear is legitimate. Done well, TBM is a multi-year commitment, because at its core it's organizational change management, not a project with an end date. But the multi-year commitment that worries you usually traces back to buying the software first. That path comes with its own built-in tail: consultants to implement the platform, then a TBMA hired to keep running it once the consultants leave. A year can go by before anyone's proven the thing does what it was bought to do.
If a tool is what's prompting this initiative, that's fine, plenty of good programs start there. Just don't let standing up the platform become the scope. The moment "implement the tool" replaces "prove this use case," you've turned year 1 into an expensive mobilization. Keep the tool in service of what you want to deliver, not the other way around.
If your company already has an IT Finance function, you're probably past the point where you can do this completely alone. That function existing signals the organization already decided tech spend was too complex for corporate FP&A to handle on its own, which is exactly the validation you need to build on. You'll need to operate more like a recruiter and liaison. Find your allies in IT Finance, FP&A, and IT who will help you pull the data and validate your logic. You'll probably have to own the heavy lifting on analysis, reporting, and storytelling to leadership. But again, keep the scope narrow and targeted to a specific outcome that leadership cares about.
If you don't have an IT Finance function at all, start smaller than that. Pick a use case for a specific bucket of spend, a handful of vendors, or even a major contract that's hard to forecast or up for renegotiation. Enlist the allies you need, gather the right data, do the analysis, and drive the org to the right decision. Then ask your leader to bet on you being able to do it again with more resourcing.
Hope that helps!
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