Webinars - TechTalk Summits

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Cprime Presents: How to Prove Your AI Spend to the Board

Thursday, October 22nd | 11:00 AM PT / 2:00 PM ET

The Board Doesn't Believe in Your AI Spend. Here's How to Prove It.
IT asks the board for $5M to expand AI. The board asks why. IT explains that unit costs are falling and productivity will rise. The room goes quiet.

The investment isn't the problem. The story is. AI costs sit in FinOps. Project spend sits in the portfolio. Budgets sit in finance. Business outcomes sit nowhere. Each team reports its own numbers, and no one outside IT can connect them. A strategic ask becomes a data dump.

Why This Matters Now
Gartner projects global AI spending will exceed $2.5 trillion in 2026. Enterprises are moving AI out of pilots and into daily operations. Spend is scaling faster than leaders can explain it. Boards want to know what AI returns, not what it costs per transaction.

This session shows how to connect AI consumption and cost to business strategy, portfolio execution, financial management, and measurable outcomes using the Apptio suite. You get one data set, one story, and an answer the board understands.

Key Takeaways

Why AI business cases stall at the board level, and what to present instead
How to connect AI consumption data in Cloudability with portfolio data in Targetprocess and financial data in ApptioOne
How to tie each AI investment to a business outcome you can measure
How to assign ownership and accountability for AI spend as it moves from pilot to production
How to extend your existing TBM practice to cover AI without starting over

Who Should Attend
CIOs, CFOs, and technology executives who present AI investments to the board. Business and finance leaders who fund AI initiatives. TBM, FinOps, and ITFM practitioners who have the data but struggle to turn it into a business case.

Credibility and Differentiation
Cprime will walk through the Enterprise AI TBM Value Lifecycle Framework. It is a repeatable way to run TBM for AI. It brings SPM, ITFM, FinOps, and AI telemetry into one model, so every AI dollar connects to strategy and results. Cprime is an IBM Platinum Partner with [X] years of Apptio delivery experience.

Speakers

Carollyn Gehrke Digital Product Manager Carollyn is an experienced Digital Product Manager with a proven track record of delivering fresh, data-driven solutions for managing digital businesses. Her expertise spans Strategic Portfolio Management, IT Financial Management, and Technology Business Management, with a career that has bridged IT and Accounting. A trusted partner to leadership teams, Carollyn drives business transformation by connecting operations and finance to deliver real financial and business outcomes. She's passionate about shifting how organizations view IT, from a cost center to a driver of business value, and has coached product leadership across roughly 500 digital mini-businesses to make smarter, more informed decisions. Carollyn leads by example, holding her team accountable and driving performance against key business outcomes.

Lauren Bateman