Keeping costs under control continues to be a challenge for many organizations as they increase cloud and SaaS spend and invest in emerging technologies like AI. Enter FinOps as a Service (FaaS). Many organizations choose to outsource the implementation and management of FinOps practices to managed service providers (MSPs) or FinOps consultants. But before we dive deeper into FaaS, let’s review what FinOps is.
What is FinOps?
FinOps is a discipline that encourages cross-functional collaboration to manage variable technology spend effectively. It enables teams to make strategic and value-based decisions based on actionable insights.
For clients, FinOps represents a way to gain clarity and accountability around cloud spend. For MSPs, FinOps is a chance to extend their service portfolio with differentiated service offerings.
However, implementing FinOps without in-house expertise or dedicated resources is not an easy feat. This is why FinOps as a Service (FaaS) exists. With FaaS, companies gain immediate access to specialists who already hav e the frameworks and playbooks needed to control costs. For MSPs, this is an opportunity to create recurring revenue streams while helping clients maximize cloud ROI.
This guide breaks down the FaaS concept in detail and explores how you can implement it. You’ll also learn best practices both clients and providers should follow.
Why companies choose FinOps as a Service
For organizations new to FinOps, one of the first challenges is deciding how to structure the practice. A few key questions usually come up:
- Do we have existing personnel who can take on responsibility for FinOps?
- Do we have the budget to hire a dedicated FinOps team?
- Should we build our own tool, purchase a third-party FinOps platform, or outsource to a partner?
For many companies, especially those that are resource-constrained or lack deep expertise, the most practical option is FinOps as a Service.
With FinOps as a Service, companies benefit from:
- Expertise without hiring challenges. Cloud cost specialists are rare and expensive to hire. With a managed service, that expertise is available right away.
- Faster results. Instead of waiting months to set up internal processes, you can start optimizing cloud costs right away.
- Scalability. The service can grow with your cloud usage as the business expands.
- Proven frameworks. MSPs bring tested methodologies and strategies gained from working with multiple clients.
- Cost efficiency. By reducing overspend and eliminating waste, the service often pays for itself.
FinOps as a Service offers a clear path for organizations that want to gain control over their cloud spend quickly, without the overhead of building a function from the ground up.
For MSPs: If you are getting started with FinOps as a Service, check out our blog on building and scaling a FinOps practice.
How FinOps as a Service works
FinOps as a Service provides organizations with a structured, ongoing approach to managing cloud costs. It uses the same components from the FinOps Framework Phases of Inform, Optimize, and Operate. Although each provider may offer slightly different service offerings, generally speaking, the key components are as follows:
Phase: Inform
Component: Visibility & Reporting
Visibility involves collecting all usage and cost data across accounts, services, and environments. Reports and custom dashboards are then built to draw useful insights from that data. For clients, you get real-time visibility into spend. For MSPs, you can position yourself as a strategic advisor.
Component: Cost allocation
Having turned raw visibility data into insights, cost allocation then assigns costs to the right teams, projects, and business units using tagging and rules, so that teams feel empowered and incur costs responsibly. Clients gain accountability and MSPs can drive cultural adoption of FinOps principles.
Phase: Optimize
Component: Usage optimization
Here sources of waste are identified like underutilized instances, idle storage, or over-provisioned resources. Automation can be used to eliminate waste. As a result, clients see immediate savings and MSPs can deliver quick wins to prove the ROI of their service.
Component: Rate optimization
After tackling the issue of resource usage, it’s important to optimize cloud rates by purchasing cloud providers’ discounts like Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, or Committed Use Discounts. Clients can benefit from significant long-term savings. MSPs can advise on the best strategies.
Phase: Operate
Component: Governance
Governance is one of the measures taken in the Operate phase to implement FinOps at an organizational level. MSPs set up governance frameworks (tagging standards, alerts, access control) in partnership with client engineering and finance teams. As a result, guardrails help prevent overspend.
Component: Collaboration
Collaboration between MSPs, client engineering, and client finance teams ensures that financial goals and technical realities stay in sync.
With FinOps as a Service, clients receive ongoing support from experts who monitor spend, update forecasts, and refine strategies as your business evolves. This ensures your cost management practices scale with your cloud usage. For MSPs, it establishes repeatable service delivery that scales across clients.
Best practices for implementing FinOps as a Service
Whether you are a client adopting FaaS or an MSP delivering it, these best practices help ensure success:
1. Define clear goals and success metrics
Before engaging a provider, clarify what you want to achieve. Is your primary objective cost savings, forecasting accuracy, compliance, or team alignment? Establish measurable KPIs such as cost reduction targets, budget accuracy, or engineering efficiency. This creates a shared understanding of success.
Pro-tip for MSPs: Align reporting to those client KPIs and demonstrate impact regularly.
2. Involve multiple stakeholders early
Make sure finance, engineering, product, and leadership teams are involved from the start. Each group plays a role in shaping policies and making decisions. When all stakeholders are aligned, adoption is smoother and outcomes are stronger.
Pro-tip for MSPs: Facilitate stakeholder workshops to accelerate alignment.
3. Choose the right partner
Not all FinOps as a Service providers are the same. Evaluate partners based on their expertise with your cloud providers, their reporting capabilities, and their ability to provide actionable insights. Ideally, your chosen partner will have experience working with clients of similar size, complexity, or industry as you.
Pro-tip for MSPs: Highlight case studies, certifications, and tool integrations that prove your methodology.
4. Focus on visibility first
Without knowing who is spending what, cutting out waste, and optimizing your workflow is impossible. Visibility in FinOps means proactively tracing costs back to teams, projects, features, and any other business unit that’s driving spend. In this regard, FaaS providers i.e. MSPs analyze and report spend in real-time to show your teams how and at what pace they are using resources, and where inefficiencies hide.
5. Prioritize quick wins
The best FinOps-as-a-Service providers can deliver immediate savings in days or weeks by tackling the obvious inefficiencies. Those inefficiencies can be idle dev environments, oversized instances, unused storage volumes, among other easy to identify and correct sources of waste. Quick wins help prove the value of FinOps as a Service and encourage buy-in from stakeholders.
6. Embed governance and guardrails
Cost control is not just about one-time optimizations. Work with your FinOps partner to establish policies and guardrails that prevent unnecessary spending in the future. Examples include budget alerts, automated policies to stop idle resources, and spending limits by project.
7. Embrace continuous improvement
FinOps isn’t a set-and-forget-it practice. You can’t just optimize once and move on. Regularly review progress with your FaaS provider, adjust forecasts, and refine policies as cloud usage evolves. Continuous improvement ensures your FinOps practice grows alongside your business.
8. Communicate wins across the organization
Share results frequently, not just with finance but also with engineering and leadership. Highlight savings, improved forecasting accuracy, and operational efficiencies. This reinforces accountability and motivates teams to continue adopting best practices.
Let’s dive a bit deeper into choosing the right partner.
How to choose a FinOps as a Service provider
For clients, a great FaaS provider embeds itself in your success. But what makes a great FaaS provider? Here’s the criteria:
- Verify their technical credentials. Look for a certified FinOps provider with a deep engineering-level understanding of your specific cloud platforms. One smart way you can verify this expertise is through case studies from companies with a similar cloud footprint and complexity to yours.
- Understand their toolset. Did this provider build an in-house tool? Do they leverage native cloud tools for their service? Is their service powered by a third-party FinOps vendor such as Ternary? It’s important to know how your service is being provided.
- Demand action-oriented reporting. Scrutinize the FaaS provider’s reporting. You need a provider that provides transparency into the action and the financial impact, not just the outcome. Any provider can give you a bill. Therefore, see if the provider just shows you metrics, or does it clearly link savings back to specific actionable changes.
- Ensure they empower your team. Does the provider promise ongoing training and support for your internal teams, or do they just manage costs? Prioritize providers whose service can boost your organization’s internal FinOps maturity.
Final thoughts
FinOps as a Service helps organizations bring financial accountability to the cloud. For clients, it provides a faster path to cost efficiency, predictability, and collaboration. For MSPs, it unlocks an opportunity to deliver high-value, recurring services that strengthen client relationships.
Ultimately, FinOps is about aligning technology spend with business value. When delivered as a service, it ensures both cost savings today and smarter investments tomorrow.
Build a FinOps service powered by Ternary.
FAQ
Why building FinOps in-house often fails?
Building FinOps in-house usually fails because skilled FinOps professionals are rare and expensive, which makes it tough to form a strong internal team. Then there’s the tooling issue. Organizations either spend too much time building their own solutions or pay for tools that don’t fully solve the problem.
Why FinOps as a Service is better than DIY?
FinOps as a Service is a ready-made service with automation, insights, and ongoing optimization. FaaS is ideal for organizations looking to save time. With DIY, they would need to spend months hiring specialists and building tools that may only deliver subpar performance.
What is the difference between traditional cost management and FinOps as a Service?
To answer simply, traditional cost management is reactive, while FinOps as a Service is proactive and data-driven. The former tries to cut costs after they’ve already happened. The latter has visibility into real-time cost drivers, which helps you cut waste and make optimizations before it’s too late.
