The FinOps Landscape
Over the past two decades, IT investment models have fundamentally changed. Organizations have steadily shifted from Capital Expenditures (CapEx) to Operational Expenditures (OpEx), beginning with software licenses, cloud infrastructure, and SaaS—and accelerating rapidly with the rise of AI.
Unlike CapEx, which is typically planned, static, and centrally managed, OpEx is dynamic and consumption-based. Its cost impact is shaped daily by decisions made across engineering, product, procurement, finance, and the business. Every deployment, configuration change, model selection, and vendor contract can materially affect spend.
This shift has dramatically increased both the complexity and impact of IT financial management.
The Core FinOps Challenge
Today, these stakeholders often operate in silos. As a result, organizations struggle to maintain alignment between technology decisions and business outcomes. Gartner estimates that more than 30% of IT OpEx spend is wasted or misaligned with business priorities—a staggering figure given the rapid growth of cloud, SaaS, and AI spending.
At this scale and level of dynamism, it is no longer realistic for a centralized team to track, manage, and optimize OpEx in isolation. The only viable path forward is organizational alignment around the FinOps framework and its core principles:
- Iterative, data-driven decision-making
- Clear accountability for spend
- Deep collaboration across engineering, finance, and the business
FinOps is not a tool—it is an operating model.
Why Data Is the Bedrock of FinOps Maturity
As FinOps practices mature, teams quickly realize that data quality and accessibility determine what is possible. A comprehensive, accurate, and actionable FinOps dataset is the foundation for building trust, driving engagement, and prioritizing the highest-impact initiatives.
With the right data, FinOps teams can move beyond reactive cost reporting and focus on what truly matters: predictability, optimization, and informed trade-offs that support business strategy.
Without it, even the best intentions stall.
Where Current FinOps Tools Fall Short
Most existing FinOps tools perform adequately in the early Crawl stage of adoption. However, they struggle to support organizations as they move into the Walk and Run stages—where complexity, scale, and expectations increase significantly.
Two critical gaps consistently emerge:
- The ability to produce a comprehensive and flexible FinOps dataset
- The ability to drive sustained engagement across the organization
A one-size-fits-all approach rarely reflects how a specific organization operates. This often leads to data inconsistencies, eroding trust in FinOps outputs and limiting their usefulness in real decision-making. The lack of a true, unified source of truth is a major reason many advanced FinOps teams resort to building in-house solutions—despite the cost and operational burden (the “DIY dilemma”)
Just as importantly, most tools rely on a flawed engagement model: asking stakeholders to come to a dashboard-based FinOps tool to participate
At scale, this rarely works.
Engineers, product teams, business leaders, and finance partners are already balancing numerous competing priorities. Expecting them to consistently log into a separate cost management tool—especially one that may not reflect their context or timing—is unrealistic.
Unlocking FinOps at Scale
The real power of FinOps is unlocked when relevant data, insights, and controls are embedded directly into the workflows where decisions are made.
Instead of pulling stakeholders into FinOps, mature organizations push FinOps to them—integrating insights into the tools, processes, and moments that already shape behavior. This shift is what enables accountability without friction and alignment without constant manual effort.
To sustainably enable FinOps at scale, organizations should focus on three core components:
- A customizable FinOps data platform
One that delivers comprehensive, accurate, and predictive data—along with the artifacts and controls required to support real decisions. - A dedicated FinOps function
Responsible for integrating insights into the right people, places, and business processes, rather than simply producing reports. - Strong leadership alignment
Reinforcing accountability for spend and ensuring cost awareness is treated as a shared responsibility, not a centralized afterthought.
By adopting this approach, organizations can move beyond cost visibility and begin realizing the full promise of FinOps: improved predictability, greater efficiency, and maximized business value from increasingly complex IT investments.
