From FinOps Bean Counting to Value Harvesting: The Rise of Unit Economics

Applying FinOps concepts to your cloud consumption is not new. It’s often treated as an IT hygiene task: necessary but not strategic. And while cost optimization and waste reduction are worthy efforts, it’s all too common to see these activities fall victim to higher daily priorities. When they are in focus, it’s often attempted by looking for low-hanging wins using cloud-native services that aren’t overly interested in delivering a comprehensive picture of cloud spend. It’s just one of those activities that is hard to get too excited about.

I challenge us to reboot this thinking with a fresh, outcome-focused perspective:

First, let’s expand FinOps to consider the bigger picture of technology spending, which the FinOps Foundation calls “Cloud+” in its 2025 State of FinOps Report (https://data.finops.org). Complexity is increasing: multicloud and hybrid environments are the norm. Real technology spend includes observability tools, containers, data platforms, SaaS licensing, AI/ML, and peripheral services, sometimes hand-waved away as shadow IT or just life as part of an unavoidable cost center. The more we can pull in these broader costs, the more accurate our insight into technology investments. Which leads us to…

Second, let’s start thinking about Unit Economics. This is a challenge, and only a small percentage of organizations fully get there, but the business payoff in shifting to this mindset can bring immediate business performance results, well beyond just optimizing public cloud infrastructure. The story we need to tell in FinOps isn’t “How much are we spending?”; it’s whether we are profiting from our investments and understanding the impact on revenue and margin if cost drivers change. Let’s make sure every dollar spent is a good dollar aligned to business objectives. Controlling costs is necessary. Maximizing value is strategic.

Measuring What Matters

Unit Economics is about shifting focus—from tracking aggregate cloud spend to measuring value at the most meaningful level: per transaction, per customer, per workload, or per outcome. These metrics bridge the gap between cloud consumption and business impact, aligning technology decisions with revenue, profitability, customer experience, and other key performance indicators.

Unlike traditional IT financials, unit economic metrics are built to reflect how your business actually operates. They unify Finance, Engineering, and Product teams around shared goals, fostering a mindset where cost efficiency and value creation go hand in hand. When used effectively, these metrics inform everything from financial forecasting, product planning, digital strategy, M&A onboarding, and feature delivery—turning cloud from a cost center into a competitive advantage.

Asking the Right Questions

Establishing effective unit economics begins with curiosity, a willingness to think differently, and meaningful collaboration. Consider these exploratory questions:

• Do we have the right visibility into our overall technical spend?
• Does it feel like there has to be a better way to do this?
• How mature are our tagging, cost allocation, and mapping practices?
• Can we define measures that reflect our company’s business performance goals?
• Are Finance, Product, and Engineering collaborating on goals, reporting, and forecasting?
• Do we have the right tools to build a complete picture of technology value as we scale?

From Cost to Value: The Unit Economics Flow

To put unit economics into action, organizations can follow this basic flow:

1. Collect cloud and technology cost data across hybrid infrastructure, marketing, SaaS, and 3^rd party tools
2. Allocate costs to business segments such as products, BU teams, or delivered services
3. Define units of value that reflect relevant and meaningful business outcomes
4. Integrate with business systems to leverage financial, sales & marketing, labor, and performance metrics
5. Calculate and normalize unit metrics across products, departments, and regions
6. Visualize, monitor, and act through dashboards, forecasts, and optimization reviews

This approach is a baseline for moving towards more informed decisions and the potential impact of future investments.

Maturing Unit Economics with Apptio Cloudability Intelligence

Technology alone doesn’t solve this challenge, but the right platform accelerates the journey. We leverage Apptio Cloudability to bring at-scale intelligence and automation to financial operating models. With Cloudability, our clients can:

• Automate cost allocation using advanced tagging, showback, and chargeback models
• Visualize unit cost metrics by product, application, or team
• Simplify visibility into multicloud and container-based environments
• Forecast spend using trends and usage patterns tied to real business activity
• Detect cost anomalies and surface optimization recommendations
• Track and benchmark progress on key metrics like Cost per Customer or Revenue per Technology Dollar

Our goal is to bring the right intelligence to fit your business strategy, not just your IT infrastructure, delivering insights into your everyday operating model and reinforcing a culture of accountability and shared ownership. Challenge yourself to change your mindset on cost vs. value and see how unit economics can drive impactful outcomes to your organization.