How to Justify DCIM's ROI to Leadership

For those deep in the day-to-day operations of a data center, the value of a modern Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution is often clear. It helps improve capacity planning, uptime, energy efficiency, and the productivity of people. Data center professionals understand this, and most would love to have DCIM software that simplifies their jobs and helps them deliver better results.

But for leadership who controls the budget, the benefits of DCIM software aren’t always so obvious. They’re thinking in terms of risk exposure, business agility, and financial outcomes, not about racks, servers, or cables.

To secure buy-in from leadership, you need more than a list of features. You need a clear, compelling case that ties DCIM software directly to business value.

In this blog post, we'll walk through how to build that case: how to align your message with leadership’s priorities, quantify the risks of doing nothing, and translate DCIM’s benefits into clear, measurable returns on investment (ROI).

Understand Leadership’s Priorities

Before you dive into technical details, take a step back and consider what leadership truly cares about. Their priorities usually boil down to a few key outcomes: reducing costs, minimizing risk, improving operational efficiency, and enabling the business to grow or adapt faster.

When making your case for DCIM software, frame every point around these outcomes. For example:

• Instead of saying, "DCIM provides real-time monitoring of power usage," say, "DCIM enables more informed energy management, which can help reduce operational costs."

• Instead of explaining the specifics around asset and capacity management features, explain how improved visibility can delay capital expenditures by optimizing existing resources.

• Instead of highlighting detailed reporting features, show how faster, more accurate reporting and dashboards support better executive decision-making.

The key is to speak the language of business value, not features and technical jargon.

Also, consider how DCIM software ties into larger company initiatives that leadership already cares about like achieving sustainability goals, maintaining high availability for services, or accelerating deployment times for new projects. Connecting a DCIM software project to these bigger strategic objectives will make your case even stronger.

Quantify the Current Pain Points

Once you've aligned with leadership's priorities, the next step is to show the cost of doing nothing. If your data center is operating without a DCIM solution, there are hidden risks and inefficiencies that add up fast.

For example, there are many risks of using spreadsheets to manage your data center that you can make known to leadership.

Start by identifying and, where possible, measuring these pain points:

• Inaccurate or incomplete asset information. How often are assets misplaced, mislabeled, or underutilized? What’s the time and labor cost of manual audits? What is the impact on your business if asset information is less than 95% accurate?

• Stranded capacity. How do you know if you have underutilized space, power, cooling, and port capacity? What is your cost to deploy a server-ready cabinet? What is the impact on your business if you don’t have enough capacity?

• Risk of downtime. Have you experienced outages caused by human error, poor visibility, or slow response times? What is the impact to your business if you don’t know which power path is feeding a compute device’s power supply?

• Sustainability challenges. How do you currently monitor energy consumption? What is the impact to your business if you don’t have a plan to reduce your carbon footprint?

• Operational costs. How many remote hands tickets do you create and how much do you pay for them? What is the impact to your business if you waste energy by overcooling, have ghost servers, etc.? How do you know if you can consolidate your footprint?

Translate these risks into hard numbers wherever you can. Even rough estimates are powerful. For example:

• “Our last manual asset audit required 100 staff hours and revealed that we were paying $100,000 in maintenance contracts for equipment that was no longer in use.”

• “Unplanned downtime cost us approximately $250,000 in lost productivity and SLA penalties last year.”

• “We spend $400 for every remote hands ticket, including for things like taking measurements.”

By painting a clear picture of the current inefficiencies and risks, you set the stage for DCIM software to be seen not as an optional tool, but as a necessary investment.

Translate DCIM Benefits into Financial Metrics

Now that leadership understands the risks and hidden costs of the current environment, it’s time to show how DCIM software directly improves the bottom line.

Focus on financial impacts that matter most to the business:

• Defer capital expenses. DCIM software enables more informed capacity planning, which means you can defer major capital investments. Instead rolling out new racks or building new data centers, you can maximize the utilization of your existing facilities.

• Optimize operational costs. By automating routine tasks such as data entry, DCIM software reduces manual and time-consuming work, freeing your team to focus on higher-value initiatives.

• Improve energy efficiency. With better visibility into power usage and cooling performance, DCIM software potentially helps lower energy costs and improve Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), directly impacting utility bills.

• Reduce the risk of downtime. Every minute of downtime avoided saves money and protects your company’s reputation. Faster incident detection and troubleshooting can prevent minor issues from escalating into costly outages.

Whenever possible, tie these benefits to specific, relatable examples with statements like, “Finding 20% stranded power capacity in our existing racks could help us defer $300,000 in deploying new server-ready racks,” or “Improving our PUE by just 0.1 could save us $50,000 annually in energy costs.”

The more clearly you can connect DCIM’s capabilities to measurable financial outcomes, the easier it becomes for leadership to see the investment as a strategic win, not just another expense.

Now, these are just hypotheticals, and if you go this route, you would need to calculate the value of DCIM software for your specific organization. However, here are some real DCIM ROI stories that customers have shared. Consider whether any of these are relevant to your company and your objectiives:

• Five9 saved around 50% on remote hands tickets and saved 36% on one vendor’s maintenance contract by having more complete asset information.
• Cisco consolidated colo cages by 66% which saves them $40,000 a month.
• Comcast is getting 40% more usage out of their facilities and power resources.
• Delta Dental performs asset audits with 75% less effort.

• A large software company saves about $500,000 a year in staffing costs by increasing operational efficiency.

• The World Bank saves 10 hours every month by integrating DCIM with Splunk.

For more examples, read our DCIM case studies.

Highlight Your Vendor’s Track Record

When proposing an investment in DCIM software, it's important to show leadership that you're not just picking a tool — you're choosing a proven, reliable partner that is focused on your success. A strong vendor track record can be a major factor in securing budget approval because it helps de-risk the project in leadership's eyes.

Look for ways to highlight:

• Customer success stories and case studies. Point to examples where similar organizations have achieved measurable ROI, efficiency gains, or risk reductions using the solution.

• Public references and reviews. Share real feedback from other customers — through online reviews, webinar recordings, or published case studies — to show broad market validation.

• Commitment to customer support. Emphasize the vendor’s responsiveness, technical expertise, and available support resources (e.g., weekly free training, how-to videos, etc.). Strong support reduces the risk of downtime during deployment and accelerates time-to-value.

• Active customer community. If the vendor offers user groups and customer workshops highlight these resources as ways to maximize the investment long-term.

When framing this to leadership, position it as not just selecting software but partnering with a strategic vendor that has a strong record of delivering success for customers with public proof points, best-in-class support, and an engaged customer community that will help you maximize your results.

Anticipate and Address Objections

Even with a strong case, expect some pushback. That’s normal. Being ready to handle objections calmly and confidently will show leadership you’ve thought through the investment from all angles.

Here are a few common objections you might hear, and ways to address them:

• “It’s too expensive.” 

​Response: Break down the cost compared to the risks and hidden expenses you’ve already outlined. Emphasize how even small efficiency gains or a single avoided outage could easily offset the investment, explain the various risks of not investing in DCIM software, and be prepared to discuss how the initial acquisition cost compares to the total cost of ownership.

• “We already have tools for this.”

Response: Acknowledge existing tools but explain where they fall short (e.g., no real-time insights, lack of integration, manual processes). Position DCIM software as a solution to enable a single pane of glass to all infrastructure across all sites rather than another siloed system. Leverage success stories such as Erie Insurance saving $100,000 over 3-4 years by consolidating four tools to one.

• “Implementation will take too long.”

Response: With modern DCIM software, downloading and installing the solution is easy, and enterprise customers with hundreds to thousands of cabinets can typically expect to have the software fully populated with data and managing the system on their own within two to six months. Share a realistic deployment plan that includes quick wins and long-term value. A vendor focused on your success should be having deployment roadmap conversations with you already.

• “We have higher priorities.”

Response: Tie DCIM software to those higher priorities like operational efficiency, cost control, uptime, and sustainability. Frame it as a too that supports broader initiatives, not a distraction from them.

Whenever possible, have supporting data and DCIM case studies on hand. Showing that other organizations have successfully navigated these same concerns can help lower leadership’s resistance and build trust in your proposal.

Build a Simple, Impactful Business Case

Once you’ve gathered all your facts, it’s time to pull everything together into a clear and compelling business case that leadership can quickly absorb and approve.

Keep it focused, numbers-driven, and aligned with leadership’s goals. Your business case may include:

• Executive summary. Explain the opportunity, the risks of inaction, and the strategic value of investing in DCIM software.

• Problem statement. An honest assessment of current challenges backed by real data.

• Solution overview. A concise description of the DCIM platform, what it does, and why it’s the right fit for your organization.

• Cost and timeline. Provide a ballpark investment figure and an estimated deployment timeline.

• ROI projection. Show projected savings over several years based on your earlier quantifications. Use charts or tables if possible.

Remember to use plain language, not technical jargon. Assume some decision-makers may not be deeply technical and they care more about outcomes like cost savings, business continuity, operational agility, and competitive advantage.

By presenting a clean, well-organized business case, you make it easier for leadership to say "yes" because you’ve already done the thinking for them.

Bringing It All Together

Justifying DCIM to leadership isn’t about selling a piece of software — it’s about showing how smarter, real-time visibility into your infrastructure supports the company’s biggest goals: reducing costs, minimizing risks, maximizing efficiency, and enabling future growth.

By focusing on financial impacts, painting a clear before-and-after picture, addressing potential concerns, and presenting a simple, metrics-driven business case, you will have a high likelihood of successfully capturing enthusiastic support from leadership.

Looking for help building your business case for DCIM software? Leverage Sunbird’s customer case studies to learn about the real ROI customers are achieving.