How Do FinOps Teams Continue to Add Value in an Optimized Environment?

Key Insight: FinOps at enterprise scale requires ongoing discipline, improvement, and maintenance; even if you think you have it all right, new challenges await as your cloud footprint and utilization increases.

Accenture helps clients add FinOps Capabilities sequentially – for example, “you might start with tooling and visibility and then move to forecasting” – and simultaneously establishes a regular cadence for governance meetings with both the teams consuming cloud and with senior leadership. In these meetings, senior stakeholders establish KPIs, and continue to review and refresh them over time by asking, “What did I do this month?” and, “How does my number trend from last month?”

Mike sees some of the most interesting FinOps challenges arise after a team has been established for a few years. Established teams have moved beyond simple optimizations and are engineering their environments to be efficient from the start. At this point, the team is ready to integrate more data and tackle advanced capabilities like Unit Economics, a “north star of FinOps.” This enables the technology team to align with business goals, whether they be revenue, profit, sustainability, etc., which is what FinOps is really all about.