The iteration of Financial Management provided within LiveTime Service Manager acts as a transitional role between an organization’s corporate finances and service management. Leveraging CMDB relational data and layering financial information over the top of the infrastructure provides IT with the capability to calculate and assign a monetary value to services and service components. This in turn allows costs to be allocated across the organization based on usage and warranty.

Calculating costs

With the goal being to ensure funding for the delivery and subsequent consumption of services, Financial Management focuses on the supply and demand requirements based on business strategy, capacity inputs and usage forecasts. LiveTime derives the monetary value of a service by calculating the operating and capital costs, which includes the investments made in hardware, software license costs, annual maintenance fees and personnel resources used to support and maintain the services. The sum of these infrastructure costs can then have various strategies applied to determine the contributing cost factors for a service.

Finances for the future

LiveTime provides service organizations with a forecasting tool that leverages all known contributing cost factors. The service cost calculator then takes usage estimates and the derived cost base to assist with service pricing. Financial forecasts along with the actuals are stored in a central repository, LiveTime’s embedded CMDB. Organizations use this information to generate internal reports, or reports based on the cost and pricing predictions made within the service cost calculator. This information is internally broken down by cost center, ready to be reassembled in real time in reports or accessed via the LiveTime interface to assist with business planning and budgeting processes.

Integration is key

LiveTime Service Manager’s tightly integrated Financial Management provides easy access to hierarchical cost information stored in the CMDB. This allows Organizational Units to be considered as consumers of services, and also as Cost Centers. Utilizing Configuration Management and controlling access to financial information via a role based security system, means LiveTime presents a consolidated solution for Financial Management, fully integrated with the Service Portfolio and Service Catalog.