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 /  Craig Slack

Kickstarting Your FinOps Journey: A Step-by-Step Guide

In our previous blog posts, we explored the fundamentals of FinOps, the maturity model, and real-world success stories. In this post, we will provide a step-by-step guide on how organizations can get started with their FinOps journey and achieve cost optimization. The key is to start with the basics, don’t boil the ocean and try to do it all at once or get lost on trying to achieve all of your FinOps goals before launching a FinOps practice. That’s why the FinOps maturity model has a scale from Crawl to Walk to Run. You have to first learn to crawl, so here are some of the basics that you can get started with.

Step 1: Understand Your Current Costs

Analyze your current cloud spending and usage to identify trends and areas for improvement. Use tools like Azure Cost Management and Azure Advisor for insights. Understanding your current costs is essential for identifying cost-saving opportunities and setting goals for improvement.

Step 2: Identify Key Roles and Stakeholders

Establish a FinOps team with representatives from finance, IT, and business units. Ensure executive sponsorship and buy-in for successful implementation. Identifying key roles and stakeholders is crucial for driving accountability and ensuring that FinOps practices are implemented effectively.

Step 3: Set Up Guardrails and Alerts

Implement budgeting and alerting mechanisms to monitor cloud spending and prevent cost overruns. Set up policies for resource provisioning and usage. Setting up guardrails and alerts helps organizations manage their cloud spending and ensure that costs are optimized.

Step 4: Focus on Cost Optimization

Identify quick wins for cost savings, such as optimizing virtual machines, cleaning up orphan objects, and leveraging cost-saving programs like reservations and savings plans. Focusing on cost optimization helps organizations achieve significant cost savings and improve efficiency.

Step 5: Continuously Improve

Regularly assess your FinOps practices and make adjustments as needed. Use the FinOps maturity model to track progress and set goals for improvement. Continuous improvement is essential for maintaining mature FinOps practices and driving business value.

Key Considerations

  • Executive Sponsorship: Executive sponsorship is crucial for the success of FinOps practices. Ensure that executives are involved and committed to driving FinOps initiatives.
  • Collaboration: Collaboration between finance, IT, and business units is essential for effective FinOps practices. Ensure that all stakeholders are involved and aligned with FinOps goals.
  • Training and Education: Provide training and education to FinOps practitioners to ensure that they have the skills and knowledge needed to implement FinOps practices effectively.
  • Tools and Resources: Utilize tools and resources like Azure Cost Management, Azure Advisor, and the FinOps Foundation to support your FinOps practices.

Starting your FinOps journey can lead to significant cost savings and improved efficiency. By understanding your current costs, identifying key roles and stakeholders, setting up guardrails and alerts, focusing on cost optimization, and continuously improving, organizations can achieve cost optimization and drive business value. In our next blog post in this series about FinOps, we will discuss the tools and resources available to support your FinOps practices.

For years now, Invero has made its mission to help clients maximize the value of their investments in cloud because we are firm believers in the benefits that the cloud can bring to organizations of all sizes. FinOps is core to achieving this mission because without proper governance around cloud spend and tying that back to the business value that each dollar spent is driving, then there is a high risk of wasting money or not achieving optimal return on investment.

Many organizations that we work with struggle to know where to start, which is why we developed FinOps Ready™. This is our solution to help you develop a roadmap for maturing your FinOps practice based on your unique needs, it’s not a one-size fits all or cookie cutter plan. Learn more and get started for FREE on your own today, or contact us to get help from our experts.