Find out what's driving your cloud and data spend and why
FinDataOps Discovery is a fixed-scope, read-only diagnostic. In one to two weeks it shows you where your data-platform spend hides, who should own it, and the size of the savings opportunity, before you commit to a full engagement.
£10,000
Flat fee
1-2 weeks
From data access to report
Read only
Billing and schema data
Zero risk
Fee credited if you upgrade
Your data bill is going up and nobody can explain why
Three questions tell you whether you're managing your data bill or just watching it happen: where did the money go? Can you predict next month? Who will act on it?
FinDataOps Discovery closes the gap between CFO, CTO and Head of Data by giving all three the same facts to work from.
Half of your cloud spend has no owner
Every pound attributed to an owner, in £/month
CFO, CTO, and Head of Data are all looking at different numbers
One report with the same facts for all three roles
No clear next step, the same cost problems come back next quarter
Go/tier recommendation with indicative savings range
The right output for your role
The right output for your role
CFO / Finance Controller
What you get with FinDataOps Discovery:
A conservative, caveated savings range built to go straight to the board. Spend baseline against which budget variance can be tracked. ROI case for the next engagement, before committing to it.
Output: Spend baseline · Savings range · Go/tier recommendation
CTO / CIO
What you get with FinDataOps Discovery:
Full picture of your data platform costs by platform and resource type, with tag coverage gap in £/month, top waste signals, and a Readiness Score across five dimensions.
Output: Readiness Score · Waste indicators · Tag coverage gap
Head of Data / Head of Engineering
What you get with FinDataOps Discovery:
Owner mapping at the data platform layer. AI/ML workload cost exposure. A clear recommended next step, Essentials, Enterprise, or no-go, so the team acts on evidence, not on instinct.
Output: Owner mapping · AI exposure · Recommended next step
Not sure if this fits your situation?
A 30-minute scoping call confirms fit before any commitment.
Your FinDataOps Readiness Report: seven sections, one clear next step
Every number in the report has a source in your own data and can be traced back. The savings range is conservative and caveated - we promise nothing we cannot keep. Findings are valid for 90 days from the cost export date.
Report sections:
01. Findings Summary
Executive overview: what was found, what it costs, what to do next.
02. Cloud Spend Baseline
3-month spend trend by provider, month-on-month growth rate.
03. Data Platform Exposure
Platforms detected, spend attributed, cost-per-platform breakdown.
04. Tag Coverage & Owner Mapping
Current coverage %, unattributed spend in £/month, worst-coverage resource types.
05. Waste Indicators
Top 3–5 waste patterns detected with estimated annual cost impact.
06. Readiness Score
Scored 1–5 across five dimensions: visibility, attribution, forecast reliability, governance maturity, and executive sponsorship.
07. Recommended Next Step
Go/tier recommendation: Essentials, Enterprise, or no-go. Indicative savings range.
+ AI Cost Exposure
AI/ML workload cost included in Readiness Score, surfaced before it becomes a forecast problem.
How FinDataOps Discovery works
The engagement is fully standardised: AI-augmented analysis with consultant review and sign-off on all outputs.
You provide a read-only billing and usage export and receive a scored, actionable report in return - no production access, no data samples required.
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Phase 1
Day 1–2
Client provides billing export
Read-only cost and usage export (3 months, primary cloud). Automated ingestion and baseline analysis begins.
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Phase 2
Day 3–7
Platform mapping and scan
Data platform spend mapping, tag coverage scan, waste indicator detection, AI/ML cost exposure identified.
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Phase 3
Day 8–10
Readiness Score and report draft
Readiness Score calculated, savings range modelled, seven-section report drafted by delivery team.
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Phase 4
Day 10–14
Consultant review and delivery
Consultant sign-off, report delivered in a 60-minute session. Go/tier recommendation presented and discussed.
Built around your constraints
Cloud-agnostic
AWS, Azure, GCP, Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, with no lock-in.
Read-only diagnostic
No PII, data movement, or replatforming required to start.
Compliance-ready
Least-privilege RBAC, GDPR-aware, EU AI Act and NIS2 aligned.
Fixed scope
Fully standardised: fixed price, fixed scope, fixed deliverable structure. No customisation.
If you continue, Discovery pays for itself
The entire agreed fixed price credits toward the next engagement. If the savings are there and you act, the diagnostic cost disappears from the invoice.
Questions clients ask most often
Questions clients ask most often
Would it not be better to run this analysis in-house, especially in a technically mature organisation?
Your team knows your environment better than anyone, and that will not change. There is a natural conflict of roles, though: delivery teams live off shipping and focus on product growth, while the side costs of that growth vanish in the rush of sprints. Nobody enjoys auditing their own work. We look at the same environment with a cool eye from outside, with a ready method built on the FinOps Framework and DAMA DMBOK, and we close the analysis in one to two weeks instead of months of work squeezed in next to the roadmap. Every result stays with you.
How do I know that cost growth is a real problem in the first place?
That is the exact question Discovery answers. A growing bill is not bad in itself if it follows business growth. The trouble starts when you cannot say who is spending the next pound and why. The report separates justified growth from unattributed growth and gives you an answer grounded in your own data, not in intuition.
Why should I pay for Discovery when competitors offer a similar assessment for free?
A free assessment pays for itself through what it sells next – its conclusions lean toward the vendor’s offer, not yours. Paid Discovery is different: the report stands on its own, even if you buy nothing more. And if you do continue, the full £10,000 credits toward the next engagement – net cost zero. The bigger difference is what comes after: competitors follow a free diagnostic with a fixed-rate project. Our next stage, FinDataOps Essentials, is settled against verified savings. You pay on what you gained, not on what you spend.
My budget is half of the fixed price. How do we meet in the middle?
The Discovery price is fixed and deliberately non-negotiable: it is the lowest entry point in the whole portfolio, priced so it does not trigger a procurement cycle. Instead of cutting the price, we cut your risk: the full fixed price credits toward Essentials or Enterprise if you continue within 6 months. If you already know the problem is real, there is a faster route: FinDataOps Essentials is a success-fee engagement settled against verified savings – no large upfront fee, payment tied to what you actually gain. Worth a 30-minute conversation to see which path fits.
Can Discovery be settled purely as a share of realised savings, with no upfront fee?
Discovery itself is a diagnostic – it does not implement changes, so there are no savings to share at this stage. But the model you are describing exists: FinDataOps Essentials is settled against verified savings, with an upper cap. Discovery qualifies you for it. The £10k fee credits in full, and from there the engagement is tied to what you actually gain. If that model interests you, the 30-minute scoping call is the right next step, we confirm spend profile and whether Essentials is the right fit.
Where is the line between FinOps and FinDataOps?
FinOps brings order to the whole cloud bill. FinDataOps focuses on the place where that order most often breaks down: data platforms and AI workloads (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery), which grow fastest and are hardest to attribute to owners. We combine the cost discipline of FinOps with data management practice under DAMA DMBOK. Once data makes up at least 30% of your bill, classic FinOps stops being enough.
What exactly will I receive when Discovery ends?
The FinDataOps Readiness Report: a map of current cloud and data platform spend, a measured tag coverage gap, the data platform with the highest cost exposure, and a recommendation for the next step justified against your spend bracket. All within one to two weeks, based on read-only access.
Will I have to share production data or customer data?
We neither need it nor want it. We work solely on cost and usage data: billing records, metrics, tags, read-only, covering the last three months. No production datasets, no personal data. The narrow scope also simplifies your internal security approval.
Will using your service create dependency on an external vendor?
The method works in the opposite direction. The report, the data and the conclusions stay with you, and the later stages end with code handed into your repository and cost accountability moved into your own teams. Our goal is to leave you self-sufficient.
What do we do when the potential savings are lower than the cost of Discovery?
Then the recommendation in the report reads: do not invest in the full programme. The fixed price protected you from spending far more on a project with no return, and you keep the cost map and forecast baseline regardless. Worth noting: most cloud cost tools and FinOps platforms bill as a percentage of your total cloud spend, every month, regardless of whether they deliver any savings. Discovery is a one-off diagnostic. If the savings potential isn’t there, you spent the money to find that out cleanly, not years of subscription fees to confirm what you already suspected.
Go deeper into FinDataOps Discovery
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Book a call to check if Discovery is right for you
Thank you!
In 30 minutes we confirm your cloud spend and data platforms and establish whether Discovery is the right fit - if it is, you leave with a SoW and a data access checklist ready to sign.
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