As organizations scale their cloud footprint, they also need a mechanism to effectively scale their cost optimization practice at the same time, which is where FinOps Experience-Based Acceleration (EBA) workshop come in to scale the process efficiently.

Cost visibility tools identify savings, however many organizations struggle to turn those insights into action across their hundreds of teams and thousands of applications. This post discusses the best-practices that a major North American financial institution took to run a FinOps EBA to scale their cloud cost optimization and establish a cost-aware culture across their organization; this resulted in generating over $1.4M USD in annual recurring savings for them.

The Challenge: scaling cost optimization

A major North American financial institution faced challenges while managing their AWS spend across 1,500 AWS accounts operating independently with a “You build it, you run it” approach. While this structure empowered teams with autonomy, it created complexity in implementing consistent cost management practices across the organization.

The organization had already established cost visibility practices. They were using cost management tools and had insights into potential savings through AWS Cost Optimization Hub. However, the challenge lay in execution: how to effectively engage and motivate decentralized application teams to implement these recommendations?

Introducing FinOps EBAs: outcome-focused methodology

To address the execution challenge, the organization ran a FinOps EBA. It is designed to help customers build operational muscle in Cloud Financial Management. The intent is to achieve cost optimization and remove blockers that slow down execution. This hands-on, agile, and outcome-based methodology focused on:

• Training teams in cost optimization best practices
• Identifying and implementing quick-win savings opportunities
• Configuring AWS tools for budgeting and forecasting
• Establishing a cost optimization process that scales across their organization

From Workshop to Impact: what a FinOps EBA delivers

A FinOps EBA delivers value across three dimensions: immediate cost savings, capability building, and cultural transformation. Here is what this looked like in practice when one institution ran their first engagement with over 90 participants working alongside AWS specialists to optimize 62 non-production applications and configure AWS Budgets across 85 applications:

• Immediate Cost optimization: The four-day FinOps EBA generated $825,000 USD in annual recurring savings. These savings were achieved through strategic initiatives including RDS right-sizing and AWS Graviton migration, EC2 instance optimization, removal of idle database read replicas and unused EC2 instances in non-production environments, and enhanced cost management through Reserved Instances and Savings Plans.
• Built FinOps Capabilities: The FinOps EBA dedicated a full day to cost optimization education and best practices trainings. These live sessions equipped teams to execute using AWS cost optimization tools.
• Established a cost-aware culture: Teams now actively consider cost optimization in their architectural decisions and solution designs, establishing a foundation for sustainable cost management practices that was later extended to production environments.

How It Works: planning for success

Planning for an impactful FinOps EBA begins with defining an objective to drive your FinOps EBA, focusing on a clear scope, securing the right people in the room, and completing the technical pre-requisites. This preparation typically takes four to six weeks, and when planned well, the results speak for themselves. Here are some of the best practices based on 100s of FinOps EBAs:

• Secure an executive sponsor to gain organizational alignment
• Empower an internal FinOps EBA Champion to establish organizational readiness
• Plan with your FinOps committee to establish clear objectives and success metrics
• Analyze cloud spending patterns and validate optimization opportunities with app owners
• Identify app owners and builders needed for implementing cost optimization initiatives
• Determine tooling (i.e. AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Trusted Advisor, AWS Cost Anomaly Detection, AWS Budgets)
• Set up the following FinOps EBA workstreams, each with specific objectives and outcomes:
  • FinOps Capability Building: focused on establishing a strong FinOps foundation through comprehensive training sessions accessible to all organization members.
  • Cost Optimization Implementation: focused on executing identified savings opportunities and implementing Top cost-saving recommendations.
  • FinOps Best Practices and Governance: Focused on defining processes and guardrails to sustain cost optimization beyond the FinOps EBA engagement.

Key Learnings: make it a recurring workshop

The FinOps EBA highlighted the following essential success factors for cloud cost optimization at scale:

• Collaboration: Cross-functional teams from Finance, Engineering, and Operation working together broke down traditional silos, resulting in more effective implementation of cost optimization initiatives.
• Training: Dedicated FinOps education equipped teams with practical AWS tools and knowledge for ongoing optimization.
• Non-production first: Starting with non-production environments provided a safe space to build confidence and develop best practices for production optimization.
• Mechanisms: Setting up mechanisms, such as, automated budget alerts, mandatory cost review prior to deployments, and enforced tagging policies drives consistency across 1,000s of accounts.

This first FinOps EBA marked the beginning of broader cost optimization journey for this customer, expanding to new environments and teams, establishing recurring optimization cycles, and embedding FinOps into organizational governance. As a next step, they ran a second FinOps EBA generating additional $595K USD in annual recurring savings, bringing the combined total to $1.4M USD in savings. Finally, they have since adopted the FinOps EBA as an annual exercise, scaling their cost optimization practice to 1,000s of accounts and established a cost-aware culture across their organization.

Scale Your Cost Optimization Efforts with a FinOps EBA

Ready to experience a FinOps EBA to scale your cost optimization efforts? Contact your AWS Account Manager (AM) or Customer Solutions Manager (CSM) or contact an AWS Representative to get started.