From data to action in three months

Over the past while, we at OptimaSure have seen countless organizations that spent years building dashboards and producing reports without any action ever coming out of it. Understandable, priorities lie elsewhere. But the reality is: without action, your data never becomes more than a nice-looking graph, and certainly never a driver of change. You need concrete measures and a tight timeline. In this blog, Henk van der Valk, co-founder of OptimaSure, walks you through a practical path to go from data to action in three months, using FinOps as the instrument.

Henk van der Valk

Co-founder - Optimalisatie Expert

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Data only creates value once you act on it

Insight without action is like a thermometer without context. 37 degrees Celsius is perfect for your body, catastrophic for your freezer.

And that’s usually where it goes wrong: organizations invest in reporting, but the translation into actual savings is missing.

At OptimaSure, we believe data only creates value once you act on it. FinOps isn’t a one-off analysis project, it’s genuinely a way of working. And you can put that way of working in place in three months. No thick reports nobody’s waiting for, no endless meetings that just eat up time, but with measurable results.

Why three months?

Three months isn’t a magic number, but it is a realistic sprint. Too long (6-12 months) and momentum fades; too short (4-8 weeks) is usually too tight to achieve anything structural. In three months, you can:

Get full insight into your cost structure
Implement the first quick wins
Set your organization up for lasting change

At OptimaSure, we follow this sequence: see first, then decide, then act. Our CloudXcellence app and expertise make sure you’re not producing reports, you’re taking action.

Month 1 – See where it’s leaking

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. The first month is entirely about insight. Not tables full of numbers, but data that actually tells you something.

Most organizations only ever see their monthly invoice. Useful, but worthless without context. You need to know:

Which resources cost the most?
Which environments are running when they don’t need to?
Which departments are driving the spikes?

An Azure Cost Scan gives you the answer within a few days.

Real-world example: A manufacturing company discovered that 40% of its Azure costs were going to test environments running 24/7. Forgotten snapshots, oversized VMs, duplicate licenses — all quick wins that could be tackled immediately.

Goal for month 1: A complete inventory, plus at least five identified quick wins.

Month 2 – Decide and act

With insight in hand, month two is where the work starts. This is where FinOps sets itself apart from traditional cost-cutting. You don’t wait for approval on some big project. You start with what you can do today.

Quick wins first:

Turn off unused resources (an immediate 10-15% saving)
Right-size oversized VMs (another 10-20%)
Run test environments only during office hours (often 30-40% off those resources)

CloudXcellence makes this literally one click of work. No Azure Portal, no tickets, no queues. Found a resource? Click. Turned off. Done.

The result: A retail client saved €12,000 a month simply by turning off unnecessary resources. No migrations, no architecture changes. Just turning off the tap where it was leaking.

Goal for month 2: Realize at least 20% in cost savings through quick wins.

Month 3 – Make it structural

Quick wins are great, but without a structural approach you’ll be back to square one in six months. Month three is about embedding FinOps into your organization.

That means:

Setting up cost allocation per team/project
Configuring budgets and alerts
Putting ownership with the teams (not just IT)
Establishing a monthly review cycle

The culture shift: from “IT pays for it” to “everyone is responsible.” Teams that can see their own cloud costs make different choices. That test environment left running? Suddenly it gets switched off. That oversized database? It gets optimized on its own.

CloudXcellence supports this with automatic per-team reporting, alerts when budgets are exceeded, and trend signals that flag anomalies.

Goal for month 3: FinOps embedded as a structural way of working, plus at least 30% in total savings.

From firefighting to steering proactively

After three months, the transformation is complete. From reactive (“Help, the bill’s gone up again!”) to proactive (“We can see the trend, we’re stepping in”).

You now have:

Full insight into your cloud costs
Concrete, realized savings (20-40%)
An organization that works with cost awareness built in
Tools and processes that keep it that way

The best part? This is just the beginning. With the foundation in place, you can optimize further: Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, architectural improvements. But now you have the room for that — the urgent leaks are plugged.

Start today, not tomorrow

Every day you wait costs money. Literally. Those unnecessary resources keep running. Those test environments stay on. Those oversized databases keep ticking up the bill.

Three months sounds like a long time, but it moves faster than you’d think. Week 1: scan. Week 2: first savings. Month 2: capture the quick wins. Month 3: make it stick. Before you know it, you’re in control.