Dimensions for Driving FinOps Adoption

Adopt FinOps strategies to effectively manage cloud spending and enhance financial accountability and agility in IT resource allocation

 

May 2, 2024 | Read time: 6 min

Introduction

Overseeing cloud spending and IT resource allocation has always been a priority for CIOs. However, in 2023, 82% of cloud decision-makers reported that managing cloud spend was their top challenge, according to one source. In response, many organizations are adopting a FinOps strategy.

Cloud FinOps is a framework that brings together people, processes, and technology promoting and driving financial awareness and accountability in the organization. By creating a balance between having no and tight controls on cloud spending it aims to create agility and innovation while managing cost and putting business value at the center. Too many controls lock down teams with increased approvals and reduced flexibility resulting in limited innovation and growth opportunities. No controls however will create wastage and make it difficult to track against business value realization.

Adopting FinOps successfully in an organization cannot be limited to processes and controls; it relies on the right cultural change across many different stakeholders across the organization. This is not a one-time concept, it requires an iterative approach where improvements are introduced continuously. 

This will take time, so aiming for progression rather than perfection is important - start small and continuously improve. It is important to create a psychologically safe environment - teams need to be comfortable acting. Mistakes can happen and are analyzed so that they don’t happen again. Alternatively, recommendations can be made without needing to take responsibility for other (or even all) teams in the organization. Promoting and supporting collaboration, openness, and blamelessness in every part of the FinOps framework, allows creating a lasting foundation for change and drives new behaviors and outcomes.

Five Steps to Implement a FinOps Culture

We will guide you through the 5 steps of implementing a FinOps culture in your organization:

  • Step 1 - Planning
  • Step 2 - Socializing
  • Step 3 - Preparation
  • Step 4 - Launching
  • Step 5 - Running​​​

1. Research and Planning

The initial step in establishing a FinOps culture within your organization is conducting research to pinpoint key stakeholders, pain points, and groups impacted by cloud costs, as well as creating a roadmap to facilitate FinOps adoption.

Conduct Research - Identify the appropriate stakeholders in the organization, which may include potential Advocates, Champions, or Executive Sponsors. Engage them in one-on-one conversations to ascertain their adoption strategy and delve into pain points such as cloud costs affecting business cases, the widespread perception of cost overruns, and limited cost visibility among cloud consumers. Determine the groups, teams, and individuals influenced by these pain points.

Develop a Customized Plan - Create a vision that resonates with the business and emphasizes the advantages of FinOps. Adapt the “What is FinOps Pitch Deck” to your organization’s unique needs, accounting for pain points, organizational structure, and corporate culture. Identify the necessary tools, establish an organizational “home” for the FinOps function, and select suitable candidate early-adopter teams.

Secure Essential Resources - Gain support from executive sponsors to enlist other leaders and establish a change coalition comprising genuine organizational influencers and stakeholders. Obtain budget approval, allocate headcount, and acquire new tools as required.

By carefully laying the groundwork and involving stakeholders, you will pave the way for a smooth and successful FinOps culture implementation in your organization.

2. Educate Your Organization Regarding FinOps

Promoting FinOps within your organization is an important step for securing buy-in and support from key stakeholders. This stage involves communicating the value of FinOps, sharing a vision for the future, and establishing a dialogue with impacted teams.

Communicate the Core Values of FinOps - Share the values central to the FinOps initiative, emphasizing the benefits it will bring to the organization. Present a high-level roadmap that outlines your vision for the future and how FinOps will contribute to it.

Engage Impacted Teams - Initiate FinOps conversations with stakeholders from finance, product, and engineering teams to provide an understanding of FinOps, address their concerns, and discuss how FinOps can help resolve their issues. Adjust proposed KPIs based on feedback from these conversations and establish an interaction model between the FinOps team and key partners.

Define the Initial FinOps Model - Customize the FinOps Model (Inform, Optimize, and Operate) to suit your organization’s needs. Identify the FinOps team by utilizing internal transfers where roles or individuals overlap, and fill any remaining gaps through recruitment or contracting. Map the change network for FinOps across the organization, ensuring that sponsors, influencers, and adopters are all engaged.

By promoting FinOps effectively, you’ll create a strong foundation for its successful adoption and foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, and cost-consciousness.

3. Prepare Your Organization For FinOps Adoption

As you prepare for FinOps adoption, it’s important to assess your organization’s readiness, engage stakeholders, establish regular meetings, and create a change management plan.

Assess FinOps Readiness - Start by defining tags, metadata, and organizational taxonomy, which will streamline cost allocation and reporting. Deploy, configure, and test the necessary tools for FinOps, ensuring they’re fully operational. Determine the initial KPIs, embracing a “crawl, walk, run” mentality to accommodate varying levels of maturity within the organization. Set usage and spend thresholds for alerts and report limits, and design persona-based self-service dashboards that display essential metrics for different stakeholders.

Engage Stakeholders - Measure the commitment levels of business units, especially when it comes to enterprise discount negotiations and reserved instances or savings plans. Collaborate with early adopter teams to achieve optimization wins, such as shutting down unused test environments or instances. These successes will be crucial for socializing FinOps, encouraging wider adoption later on. Implement early governance wins, like tagging policies or lease-to-live automation, to further demonstrate the value of FinOps.

Establish Regular Meetings - Set up a consistent meeting cadence between the FinOps team and business units, app teams, practitioners, and stakeholders. These ongoing discussions will help implement best practices and track KPIs, ensuring continuous improvement and alignment with FinOps principles.

These steps will ensure a smooth transition to a FinOps culture, ultimately leading to improved cloud cost management and efficiency.

4. Establish a FinOps Culture

This stage revolves around adopting a sense of accountability, promoting continuous improvement, and encouraging collaboration among finance, engineering, and executive leadership.

Foster Accountability - Encourage a culture of responsibility by ensuring that every team member understands their role in implementing and maintaining FinOps practices. Make it clear that everyone has a part to play in optimizing cloud costs and resources, and that they’ll be held accountable for their actions.

Embrace Continuous Improvement - Develop a long-term roadmap for transformation across all FinOps domains. Recognize that FinOps adoption is an ongoing process and that the organization should continuously strive to refine and optimize its practices. This commitment to continuous improvement will ensure that your organization remains agile and efficient in managing cloud costs.

Encourage Collaboration - Facilitate collaboration between finance, engineering, and executive leadership through the FinOps framework. By creating an environment where different teams can work together towards shared goals, you’ll ensure that the organization remains aligned and focused on achieving optimal cloud cost management.

By establishing a strong FinOps culture, you’ll enable your organization to fully capitalize on the potential of FinOps and optimize cloud cost management.

5. Monitor and Optimize FinOps

Monitoring and optimizing FinOps maturity is important for ensuring the long-term success of your FinOps adoption.

Track and Measure Progress - Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of your FinOps initiatives by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and comparing them against your initial goals and benchmarks. This will help you determine whether your efforts are yielding the desired results and identify areas that may require further attention.

Identify Areas for Improvement - Analyze the data gathered through tracking KPIs and other metrics to identify areas where your organization can improve its FinOps practices. This may involve uncovering inefficiencies, addressing gaps in knowledge, or refining processes to use better cloud financial management tools.

Implement Changes - Based on your analysis, implement the necessary changes to improve your organization’s FinOps maturity. This may involve refining your FinOps framework, adopting new tools or technologies, or providing additional training and support to your team members.

By continuously evaluating and refining your FinOps practices, you’ll enable your organization to remain adaptable and efficient in managing cloud costs. In this stage, you’ll focus on measuring progress, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing changes to drive further maturity and optimization.

Conclusion

Implementing Cloud FinOps is not a one-time activity and there is also not one single path to take. At every point along the way, you will need to reflect, fine-tune your approach, and make decisions on how to continue your journey.

Drive Your FinOps Strategy With Qualysoft

Organizations today use a multitude of cloud, AI, and SaaS services to keep their business operations running smoothly. However, managing these resources can become overwhelming, and organizations may find themselves overpaying for services or accumulating expenditures from underutilized resources.

FinOps is about optimizing and using cloud resources efficiently. It’s about ensuring the cloud and IT resources you have provisioned are used completely and that your applications, transactions, and processes only use necessary cloud computing resources.

Qualysoft can help you achieve your FinOps strategy using observability best practices. With critical insights into how much you’re spending and whether your costs are aligned with your business goals, you can optimize your environment across all clouds and make informed decisions to reduce cloud spending.