KEY INSIGHT: FinOps has been adopted to great effect in managing cloud spend. As FinOps practices mature, they have expanded to include broader technology spend, but as they do they are also building stronger bi-directional alignment to the business and technology strategies to inform long-term investment decisions. Leaders highlight the importance of integrating FinOps early in strategic planning, enhancing scenario modeling, applying unit economics, and optimizing vendor partnerships—supported by executive sponsorship, better data, and stronger cross-functional collaboration.
FinOps at the Executive Level
On June 2, the Foundation brought together VP/SVP/EVP+ technology leaders in San Diego at the inaugural FinOps eXec, These leaders workshopped best practices on how they are integrating FinOps with executive level decisions through top priorities, and actionable steps that both executives and FinOps teams can take.
Organizations are using a variety of IT models to build and operate, using SaaS, PaaS, API, IaaS, and self-hosted where it makes sense for each service or application. The high cost and accelerating adoption of AI is perhaps the best example that highlights the need to integrate data in every technology stack, yet quickly and efficiently align large-scale spending to business and technology strategy across the board. FinOps teams are well positioned to provide the collaboration, consolidation, and flexibility to manage AI and other technology spend.
Top Priorities for FinOps-Enabled Executive Decisions (FEED)
- Embedding FinOps in the Technology Strategy: Integrate FinOps into the broader Technology and Cloud Strategy to enable a unified, enterprise-wide approach—building on the application-by-application decision-making used by others in the organization.
- Advanced Scenario Modeling: Establish a structured approach to scenario modeling that drives consistency, eliminates bias, and reduces ad hoc decision-making — enhancing the evaluation of market opportunities, expansion strategies, licensing options, and architectural choices.
- Shifting FinOps Left: Insert FinOps into strategic planning and pre-budget approval processes to validate investments against business objectives.
- Measuring Business Value: Engage executives and business teams early in investment decisions and initiatives to clarify objectives and define success metrics from the outset.
- Unit Economics to Support Pricing and Product Decisions: Gain visibility into fully loaded unit costs—including fixed vs. variable components and build vs. operate costs—to enable more informed, customer-level pricing and product decisions.
- Vendor Strategy and Licensing Optimization: Leverage FinOps to strengthen vendor negotiations by exposing cost-per-license, usage patterns, and lock-in risks. Enhance scenario analysis to support informed decisions on renewals or vendor changes.
- Democratizing FinOps: Empower Finance, Risk, Architecture, Engineering, and Product teams with access to actionable, real-time data to accelerate decision-making and reduce delays in spend approvals and scope changes.
Actions Executives and FinOps Teams can start taking
Realizing the full potential of FinOps-enabled executive decision making requires intentional shifts in culture, process, and capability. Leaders at the eXec Forum emphasized that while challenges exist, actions should be taken now to support in overcoming them:
- Executive Sponsorship: Appoint a FinOps champion at the Executive Leadership Team level who views cost visibility, unit economics, and accountability not merely as control mechanisms, but as strategic levers to increase velocity, unlock opportunity, and establish a competitive advantage.
- FinOps Participation in Executive Decision-Making: FinOps teams should identify opportunities to build trust, transparency, and neutrality at the executive level—transitioning from an advisory role to active participation in key platform, vendor, and architecture decisions. Establishing this trust is a critical step toward having a seat at the core of strategic decision-making.
- Move FinOps to the Decision-Making Core: Evaluate reporting structures and clarify ownership to position FinOps teams for early engagement—enabling collaboration with Risk, Product, and Architecture at the pre-budget stage in a “Deal Desk” model to evaluate decisions and explore strategic alternatives.
- Create Repeatable Models for Strategic Decisions: Use FinOps to build or enhance scenario modeling capabilities that assess investment opportunities, licensing strategies, and architectural alternatives—driving more consistent, data-informed decision-making.
- Strengthen Data Quality and Attribution: Implement a consistent data framework across all technology spend—leveraging standards like the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS), robust tagging practices, and clear ownership—to ensure trusted, decision-ready data underpins every strategic choice.
- Demonstrate Value Through Visibility and Metrics: Embed FinOps KPIs into CIO and executive scorecards. Track spend against outcomes like revenue growth, product margins, and customer profitability.
- Upskill Cross-Functional Teams in FinOps Thinking: Democratize FinOps by training Procurement, Risk, Engineers, and Architecture teams in core practices. Build shared accountability and accelerate decision-making.
By taking these actions, executives begin to gain increased consistency, visibility, and control across their technology estate—and connect technology investments more directly to business goals, beyond simply reducing cloud waste.
Conclusion
The FinOps eXec Forum at FinOps X 2025 surfaced compelling priorities and actions: FinOps is not just a set of practices, but a bridge between technology investment and business value realization. As organizations operate in a complex and rapidly evolving technology landscape, executive leaders benefit from rethinking how they govern, guide, and optimize technology spend to gain a strategic advantage.
With FinOps, they gain a scalable, collaborative, and data-driven framework to do just that—enabling agile, consistent, value-focused decision-making across the enterprise.
Organizations have moved from asking “What does it cost?” to “What is the value of this decision?”—and FinOps plays a part in enabling this change.
This is just the start, as executives look to mature their FinOps practices and increase their strategic potential, the Foundation will support by sharing these best practices happening.
If you are looking for your executive to be involved in future eXec Forums, please have them e-mail Dean Oliver for a discussion.
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