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The budget check most IT Heads never run, and why surprises keep happening

Hi,


Most IT Heads I speak with have already done serious work on their costs. They’ve pulled the main data sources, challenged vendors, and pushed for better visibility.

And yet the surprises still appear.


A number moves. A vendor invoice lands higher than expected. A spillover hits the wrong cost centre. Finance asks questions in the next steering meeting that no one saw coming.


In almost every case, the root cause is not bad planning or poor forecasting.

It’s simpler than that.


The three main sources that should tell the same story about a service almost always disagree, and nobody is systematically checking where they differ.

Here’s what this looks like in practice.


On one recent engagement, the Head of Cloud & Data Center Ops was confident the big services were under control. Contracts were signed, POs were in the system, and actual spend looked stable.


When we lined up the three views side by side on the largest services, gaps appeared immediately:


  • Services marked as “already closed” were still generating uncontracted and unpaid consumption

  • Credits had already been fully used or misapplied

  • Volume commitments had drifted from actual consumption

  • Portions of cost were spilling over from the previous year’s consumption and hitting this year’s budget (or landing in the wrong cost centre)


None of it was dramatic fraud. It was normal operational drift that only becomes visible when you force the three sources to talk to each other. But we were talking about €1.6m on a €20m budget.


The fix is surprisingly powerful.


Pick your top 10 services, the ones that actually move the needle on your total spend. For each one, quickly compare:


  • What the contract and current POs say should be happening

  • What has actually been invoiced and paid

  • What the service owner or technical owner believes is currently running


You don’t need new tools. A simple side-by-side view is enough. The differences usually jump out within minutes.


When teams start running this check regularly, two things change.


First, the forecast becomes noticeably more stable because hidden movements are caught early before they become unpleasant surprised, and corrected. Second, conversations with Finance shift. Instead of defending numbers you don’t fully trust, you can show exactly where the gaps were and what has already been addressed.

This is not about creating more work. It’s about replacing scattered data requests and reactive firefighting with one focused habit that protects the numbers you already have.


If you want to see how this would look on your own largest services, I run a focused 30-minute diagnostic that does exactly this check with you. No pitch, no slides, just a clear look at where your current numbers line up (or don’t).


Talk soon, Alexandre Gay Managing Director, BG&A

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