Executive Summary
AHEAD and AWS partnered to develop a self-service FinOps dashboard for a global medical device producer. This dashboard provides real-time insights into AWS spend patterns and trends, with the outcome of controlling cloud costs and improving efficiency.
The solution offers insightful reports that enhance the client’s understanding of its AWS Cloud spend, patterns, and future costs. Its user-friendly, low-maintenance design is scalable — capable of incorporating additional data sources in the future.
This project has significantly improved their ability to identify spending trends, optimize costs, and streamline discounts and calculations, while enhancing security and compliance.
The Challenge – Spend Without Visibility
As a leader in the medical equipment industry, AHEAD and AWS’ joint client is invested in cloud technologies to drive innovation throughout its enterprise. Several business units rely on their AWS Cloud instance, but these departments had limited visibility into cloud usage and spend. Only around 10% of stakeholders were able to access these critical insights.
The client was leveraging a costly tool that lacked dashboard features and crucial data visibility into various business units. This process was manual and involved navigating multiple reporting platforms, resulting in time-consuming efforts and a high margin of error.
The client required a user-friendly FinOps dashboard, integrated into pre-existing tools, that would serve as a reliable source of information. This dashboard would mitigate data inaccuracies caused by human error and streamline productivity. It would enable cross-functional collaboration and provide critical insights into spending patterns and cost-saving opportunities using real-time data. AWS and AHEAD teamed up to provide a solution that best serves their mutual client.
AHEAD & AWS Solution – Integrated Data Enables Informed Decisions
AHEAD led the way in developing an interactive and actionable Power BI dashboard for FinOps data.
To leverage cost, usage, and recommendation data from AWS Cloud to create a comprehensive solution to empower stakeholders with valuable insights, AHEAD began meticulously integrating services such as AWS Cloud, S3, Athena, ODBC, and Power BI cloud services. This integrated data solution, harnessing the tools in the client’s current tech landscape, would serve as the foundation for the FinOps dashboard.
To significantly enhance the accuracy of the dashboard, AHEAD implemented dynamic calculation, automatic data mapping, and frequent data refreshes. This helped eliminate manual processes, saving considerable time and ensuring precise, real-time information for the client.
Beyond the technical implementation, AHEAD established robust monitoring and tracking mechanisms. These mechanisms were designed to help identify spending patterns and uncover opportunities for cost savings across all departments using AWS Cloud. The efficiency score and recommendations derived from the FinOps dashboard became invaluable tools for optimizing spending and resource allocation.
Furthermore, by promoting cross-functional collaboration with FinOps BI, AHEAD facilitated the integration of spending data across accounts, providing a unified and reliable source of truth. Data compliance considerations were kept at the forefront, ensuring the highest standards of data governance.
The resulting product allowed stakeholders with a wealth of analytical capabilities to make better-informed financial decisions. They gained access to detailed analyses of trends, cost usage, spending maps, compute optimization, monthly billing, and an efficiency score. This comprehensive view enabled them to make informed decisions and optimize spending.
Engagement Results – Deeper Data Access, Greater Efficiency, Controlled Cost Management
As a result of the project, the client experienced significant enhancements in its digital transformation across departments. These include:
- Data Visualizations: Ability to present data in a visually compelling way, making it easier for decision-makers to understand complex spending.
- Identifying Spending Trends and Patterns: The implementation of FinOps BI identifies trends and patterns in AWS spending that may not be easily visible through manual analysis. This provides valuable insights for optimizing costs and making informed financial decisions.
- Cross-functional Collaboration: The FinOps system facilitates collaboration across departments by providing a single source of truth for spending. This increased visibility from 10% to 80-90%.
- Developing Cost Optimization Strategies: The FinOps dashboard pinpoints departments, services, and cost centers with high spending. This information facilitates the development of targeted cost-reduction measures, leading to improved cost-optimization strategies.
- Tracking Efficiency with FinOps: The FinOps system empowers business units and accounts to track efficiency scores. This enables the client to identify opportunities for savings and provides a comprehensive monitoring system for spending, ensuring efficiency across the organization.
- Dynamic Discount and Cost Calculation: The flexibility offered by dynamic discounting and cost calculation on a monthly basis takes an adaptive and responsive approach to managing spending and discounts. This leads to more efficient cost management practices.
- Data Security and Compliance: The FinOps system restricts user access to specific data, ensuring that users only interact with information relevant to them or their department. This enhances data security and compliance by preventing unauthorized access to sensitive or irrelevant data.
The Power of the Partnership: AHEAD & AWS
The strategic collaboration between AHEAD and AWS offers clients a powerful combination that can truly revolutionize their cloud transformations. With AHEAD’s unrivaled expertise in consulting and AWS’s cutting-edge technologies, the duo is poised to deliver exceptional results.
This partnership empowers clients to navigate their cloud journeys with confidence. AWS’s comprehensive suite of services and AHEAD’s strategic guidance and implementation ensure that clients can seamlessly migrate their workloads, optimize their cloud infrastructure, and drive business innovation.
Moreover, these joint efforts enable clients to take control of their cloud spending through effective FinOps projects. AHEAD’s deep understanding of financial operations, coupled with AWS’s advanced cost management tools, equips clients with the ability to gain real-time visibility into their cloud expenditures. This enables clients to make data-driven decisions, identify cost-saving opportunities, and maximize the value of their cloud investments.
Together, AWS and AHEAD empower clients to achieve operational excellence, cost efficiency, and accelerated innovation in the cloud era.
“In our partnership with AHEAD, the collaboration went beyond mere pricing and mechanics—it was about understanding and fulfilling our customer’s needs. Together, we crafted a powerful dashboard that not only increased visibility into cloud spend but also laid the foundation for scalable and continuous growth in the cloud. This success is a testament to our genuine synergy and shared commitment to getting the job done effectively.”
-Mark Sexton, AWS,
Senior Account Executive
AWS Services:
- AWS Compute Optimizer
- AWS Trusted Advisor
- AWS Cost Explorer
- AWS Simple Storage Service (S3)
