A practical guide to FinOps: How to “Maximise Value, Minimise Waste” in Azure

At home, I’m forever telling my three boys and my wife to turn off the lights, close the fridge, and stop leaving the TV on when no one’s watching it. It’s not that I’m overly strict, but when everyone forgets, our energy bill shoots up for no reason.

Azure works in much the same way. Businesses move to the cloud with the promise of flexibility and only paying for what they use. But if you leave things running, unused VMs, test environments, or oversized resources, the bill racks up quickly.

That’s where FinOps comes in. Think of it as the equivalent of making sure every light is off, the heating isn’t running when no one’s home, and the freezer isn’t full of forgotten food.

But more than that, FinOps gives you the visibility to see what's driving your Azure bill and the accountability to make sure every team understands and owns their share of it.

Without that, cloud spend becomes a black hole and no one knows who’s left the meter running.

The real problem: Hidden spend

On-prem IT is predictable. You buy the servers, you know the cost, and that’s that. In Azure, it’s different - resources scale and spin up as needed, which is brilliant for agility but also makes it incredibly easy to lose track of where the money is going.

I’ve seen companies overspend by 30% or more simply because:

• Virtual machines run around the clock when no one is using them.
• Projects are started but never decommissioned.
• Teams pick premium resources “just in case,” without checking if they’re needed.
• Costs aren’t tagged or tracked, so no one knows which department is responsible.

It’s like leaving every tap running - a lot of little leaks quickly add up.

What is FinOps and why does it matter?

FinOps isn’t about cutting costs to the bone. It’s about making sure you get full value for every pound spent.

I see it as three steps:

1. Visibility: Shine a light on where the money is going.
2. Accountability: Make teams own their cloud consumption.
3. Optimisation: Tune, refine, and automate so nothing is left running unnecessarily.

It’s like trying to get my boys to switch off the lights, they couldn’t care less about the energy bill. But if I tell them I’ve had to spend the Xbox game money on electricity, suddenly they’re all ears.

Why FinOps isn’t just a one-off project

FinOps isn’t a ‘one and done’ optimisation project. It's a mindset shift. You might start with identifying cost savings, but the long-term value comes from building a cost-aware culture. When IT, finance, and business teams start speaking the same language about cloud spend, you unlock far more than short-term savings, you unlock better decision-making. And that’s what leads to scalable, predictable cloud value.

How a FinOps partner unlocks real savings

When we review a customer’s Azure environment, we almost always uncover 20% or more in quick wins. It’s rarely about cutting costs for the sake of it. It’s about aligning cloud usage to real business needs, spotting the waste, and putting the right controls in place so it doesn’t creep back in next month.

But what sets us apart is how we approach it.

We don’t just analyse numbers, we help teams understand what the data is really telling them. We look at usage patterns, project timelines, and technical configurations, but we always translate that into clear, actionable steps that drive outcomes.

We’ve worked with businesses running multiple environments with no tagging, no shutdown policies, and no ownership of spend. Within weeks, we’ve helped them not only reduce unnecessary costs but introduce governance that sticks. The result: Savings that last and a more cost-aware culture across IT, finance and operations.

We bring:

• Deep Azure expertise, with practical experience across complex enterprise environments.
• A structured, proven framework that flexes to fit your operating model.
• Collaboration with your teams, not just a report at the end.

At the heart of it, we help you Maximise Value, Minimise Waste and make cloud spend something you feel confident talking about in every boardroom conversation.

Why now is the time to act

Cloud budgets are under pressure. Every organisation is being asked to do more with less, and cloud waste is one of the easiest ways to free up budget.

Those who tackle FinOps now don’t just save money, they unlock the funds to invest in AI projects, security, and digital innovation instead of paying for idle resources.

We can help you take control of your cloud spend, offering:

• 10% off Azure PAYG services when you appoint us as your CSP Billing Partner.
• A free FinOps-led assessment to identify waste, over-provisioning and spend drivers.
• Clear, finance-first, reporting with actionable cost-saving recommendations.
• Support in creating and managing a FinOps practice to drive long-term savings.

Learn more here.