Your First 90 Days in FinOps: A Step-by-Step Cloud Cost Optimization Plan

Cloud spending can quickly spiral out of control without a structured approach to cloud cost optimization. This is where FinOps comes in—a financial operations framework that helps organizations gain visibility, optimize costs, and drive accountability across cloud teams.

The first 90 days of implementing FinOps are crucial for establishing cost governance, eliminating waste, and setting up a long-term strategy for cloud efficiency. This guide by Cloudidr provides a step-by-step plan to help businesses gain control over cloud spending and maximize savings.

Days 1-30: Establishing Cloud Cost Visibility & Quick Wins

1. Perform a Cloud Cost Audit

Before optimizing costs, businesses need to understand where their cloud spending goes. A thorough cost audit helps identify inefficiencies, misallocated resources, and immediate cost-saving opportunities.

Key Actions:

• Review billing data from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud to analyze usage patterns.

• Categorize cloud expenses by project, department, and team to track accountability.

• Identify cost anomalies such as underutilized resources, untagged resources, or unexpected spikes in spending.

2. Implement Cost Monitoring & Tagging

A lack of visibility is one of the biggest barriers to effective cloud cost optimization. Implementing real-time monitoring and tagging strategies helps track spending and improve accountability.

Key Actions:

• Enable cost tracking tools like AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, and Google Cloud Billing Reports.

• Implement a consistent tagging strategy to categorize resources based on purpose, owner, and environment.

• Set up automated cost alerts to detect unusual spikes in cloud usage.

3. Identify and Eliminate Immediate Cloud Waste

Cloud waste often comes from idle or oversized resources that aren’t delivering business value. Identifying and eliminating these inefficiencies provides quick cost savings.

Key Actions:

• Shut down idle virtual machines, unused storage volumes, and orphaned resources.

• Rightsize compute resources by adjusting instance sizes to match actual workload needs.

• Optimize storage by deleting outdated backups and moving infrequently accessed data to lower-cost storage tiers.

By taking these steps in the first 30 days, organizations gain immediate visibility into cloud spending and reduce waste, setting the stage for long-term FinOps success.

Days 31-60: Optimizing Cloud Usage & Cost Efficiency

Once cloud cost visibility is established and initial waste has been eliminated, the next step is to focus on long-term cost optimization. 

This phase involves refining cloud purchasing strategies, automating resource management, and improving governance to ensure ongoing efficiency.

4. Implement Reserved Instances & Savings Plans

Most cloud providers offer cost-saving commitments for predictable workloads. By reserving resources in advance, businesses can significantly reduce on-demand pricing costs.

Key Actions:

• Analyze historical workload data to determine which resources are consistently used.

• Purchase Reserved Instances (AWS, Azure) or Committed Use Discounts (Google Cloud) for predictable workloads, reducing costs by up to 70%.

• Use Spot Instances for non-critical workloads that can tolerate interruptions, maximizing cost efficiency.

• Continuously monitor reservation utilization rates to ensure optimal allocation and prevent unused reservations.

By committing to discounted pricing models, businesses can ensure long-term cost reductions while maintaining workload flexibility.

5. Automate Scaling & Resource Optimization

Static provisioning of cloud resources often leads to over-provisioning and unnecessary costs. Automating scaling and rightsizing ensures that resources match real-time demand, avoiding waste while maintaining performance.

Key Actions:

• Enable auto-scaling policies for compute and database resources to dynamically adjust capacity.

• Use rightsizing tools such as AWS Compute Optimizer, Azure Advisor, and Google Cloud Recommender to identify underutilized instances.

• Implement scheduled shutdowns for non-production environments (e.g., development and testing) outside of business hours.

• Optimize database and storage usage by selecting the right tier based on access patterns (e.g., moving infrequently accessed data to low-cost archival storage).

6. Improve Governance & Cost Accountability

Without proper governance, cloud spending can become unpredictable. Implementing FinOps best practices ensures that all teams—finance, engineering, and operations—are aligned on cost management.

Key Actions:

• Establish approval workflows for provisioning new resources to prevent unnecessary spending.

• Develop a FinOps playbook that outlines cost-saving policies, resource tagging guidelines, and optimization strategies.

• Hold monthly cost review meetings with stakeholders to analyze spending trends and identify new opportunities for savings.

• Enforce budget limits and chargeback/showback models to improve financial accountability across teams.

Governance and accountability into cloud operations helps organizations in creating a culture of cost awareness and proactive optimization.

Days 61-90: Scaling FinOps for Long-Term Cloud Cost Optimization

By the third phase of FinOps implementation, businesses should have visibility into cloud spending, eliminated waste, optimized resource usage, and implemented governance policies. 

The next step is to scale FinOps practices by refining cost monitoring, leveraging advanced optimization strategies, and establishing a continuous governance framework.

7. Set Up KPI Dashboards for Continuous Cost Monitoring

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is essential for measuring cost efficiency, utilization, and overall cloud optimization progress. Without real-time insights, businesses risk reverting to inefficient cloud spending habits.

Key Actions:

• Define FinOps KPIs such as:

  • Cloud spend per workload, team, or project.

  • Cost efficiency ratio (spend vs. actual resource utilization).

  • Percentage of reserved instance or savings plan utilization.

• Set up custom dashboards using AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, Google Cloud Billing, or third-party FinOps tools.

• Automate weekly and monthly reporting to track cost trends and budget adherence.

• Establish cost anomaly detection alerts to catch unexpected spending spikes and optimize resources accordingly.

Use real-time monitoring and data-driven insights to continuously track and refine cloud cost optimization efforts.

8. Implement Advanced FinOps Strategies

Once the foundational FinOps processes are in place, businesses can focus on advanced cost optimization techniques to further improve efficiency.

Key Actions:

• Optimize multi-cloud deployments by strategically allocating workloads to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud based on cost-performance trade-offs.

• Use AI-driven forecasting tools to predict future cloud spending trends and adjust purchasing strategies accordingly.

• Develop chargeback/showback models where internal teams are accountable for their cloud usage, promoting cost-conscious decisions.

• Identify opportunities for serverless adoption (AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions) to reduce compute costs for event-driven workloads.

• Implement spot instance automation for cost-sensitive workloads that can tolerate interruptions, ensuring maximum savings.

Advanced FinOps strategies help organizations continuously refine and scale their cloud cost optimization efforts, ensuring long-term financial efficiency.

9. Establish a Continuous FinOps Governance Framework

FinOps is not a one-time project—it requires continuous governance to maintain cost efficiency, accountability, and optimization. 

As cloud environments grow and change, businesses must ensure that cost control mechanisms evolve to prevent unnecessary spending.

Key Actions:

• Conduct regular cloud cost audits to identify new inefficiencies and optimization opportunities.

• Refine cloud purchasing strategies based on workload changes and updated pricing models.

• Standardize FinOps practices across teams, ensuring that finance, engineering, and operations continue to collaborate on cost management.

• Automate compliance checks to enforce cloud cost policies, approval workflows, and tagging best practices.

• Reevaluate cloud architecture and workload placement periodically to align with evolving business needs and cost structures.

By embedding FinOps governance into day-to-day cloud operations, businesses can sustain long-term cost control and prevent waste from creeping back into their cloud environments.

Conclusion: Building a Sustainable FinOps Practice

The first 90 days of FinOps implementation lay the foundation for cloud cost optimization, visibility, and financial accountability. 

As organizations scale their cloud usage, FinOps best practices must be continuously refined to adapt to new workloads, pricing changes, and business priorities. Successful FinOps adoption leads to:

• Lower cloud costs through proactive optimization

• Stronger financial accountability across teams

• Sustainable cost efficiency with continuous governance

Take Action: Optimize Your Cloud Costs with FinOps

If you’re ready to streamline your cloud spending and maximize efficiency, Cloudidr’s FinOps experts can help you implement a tailored 90-day FinOps strategy to drive cost savings and governance.

Schedule a free consultation today to start optimizing your cloud costs with a structured FinOps approach.