FinOps & Cost Opt.
A shared operating model between finance, engineering, and product. We cut the bill without cutting velocity — and leave behind a governance cadence that keeps spending honest long after we leave.
The cost waterfall
Where a 48% run-cost reduction typically comes from.
A representative first-year trajectory for a mid-sized enterprise estate. Mix shifts by workload, but the sequencing is consistent — easy wins first, commitment planning second, architectural change last.
Six levers
Six optimisation levers. Pulled in the right order.
Match capacity to actual load — not architect comfort.
Compute, DB, cache, and storage scrubbed against real p95 and seasonality. No blanket 10% haircut — targeted downshifts with automated rollback.
Plays in this lever
- CPU / memory rightsize by workload
- DB family shift (e.g. Aurora → Graviton)
- Storage tier migration (gp2 → gp3)
- Per-service kill switches tested
Anomaly stream — 24h snapshot
Cost as a real-time signal,
not a month-end autopsy.
A composite 24-hour slice from our anomaly detection pipeline. Routed to the owning team with context — the signal beats the surprise every time.
The FinOps operating rhythm
A week in the life
of a programme that sticks.
Rituals are how the savings become structural. Miss one for two months and the unit cost graph will tell you. We install them, then hand them over.
Weekly cost standup
30 minutes. Engineering, product, finance. Anomalies, wins, and the single biggest lever for next week.
Anomaly response
Automated alerts on spend, unit cost, and budget burn. Routed to the owning team with a playbook — not a Slack message.
Engineering enablement
Dashboards, IDE cost hints, and policy-as-code that put the cost signal where engineers write the code.
Business review
Cost trend vs. plan, unit economics, forecast confidence, and the top three optimisation bets — framed for the exec team.
Unit-economics scorecard
Feature and product-level cost shared with product. Cost becomes an input to prioritisation, not a year-end surprise.
Forecast accuracy review
Reconciliation of forecast vs. actual at service and account level. Tightens the forecast quarter over quarter.
// exec attendance > 85% after month 3 is our tripwire
Case snapshot
“We walked in owning $18M a year in cloud spend we couldn't fully explain. Nine months later, the bill is $9.5M, the forecast is within 3%, and engineering volunteered the rituals they used to resist.”
Two weeks from audit to a savings plan your CFO will bank on.
Give us billing export access for a recent quarter. We'll come back with a prioritised savings plan, a sequencing recommendation, and the FinOps ritual set to install.