Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you want to have an executive involved in FinOps, please listen to this episode. We are going to talk with Borja Martinez from NTT Data about what makes a Finops dashboard useful for executives and what types of executive decision does Finops allow. If you want to know the importance of phenoms, how to make your executives involved and how and who should work on finops and pursue a career on it for please listen to this episode by Finos Weekly. Starting you know, with the, the very first question that they have for you today, Borja, is that you know, for companies to realize the importance of FinOps, what companies would lose if, if FinOps ends up disappearing today?
[00:00:47] Speaker B: That's not, not a good idea.
Yeah, say maybe the accountability I would say is the main thing that we use, you know, the, the ability to, to know and to understand who is spending what and why to also control the cost. It's not just to spend less, you just control the cost. You have to know if your bid is going to be higher or lower than the previous mode, for example.
Also it also help you to make more informed decisions and therefore better decisions.
And also I think without Phenols teams will also lose.
The ability to continue speaking different languages, working in signups and definitely find out what you have on that.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Definitely. Yeah, I totally agree on that. I think the communication and being able to understand what you are spending on and it's not, you know, only cost reduction as we always like come from. I think most of us come from the cloud cost reduction idea and then you know, you adapt and you learn about the business value and related to it and I think that's what you know, trigger us to continue doing the, doing finops. Right. And I think you were very, very on point with that. But you know, diving up on the, on the business value. So where do you have seen like unexpected business value from FinOps? Like realization from companies that FinOps works on the business value and not only on the cloud cost reduction side?
[00:02:35] Speaker B: That's a good question.
I don't know if it's.
Maybe it's not respected but it's not in the usual way. But there are some things related to the product company, for example related to the product pricing or investment in features, for example to realize that the free tier of a product is generating most of the cost of an infrastructure.
So this led them to change their pricing strategy and same thing could happen with a feature. If you deliver a new feature but you realize that it's costing a lot of money and it's not delivering the value you expected.
This help you to chase your strategy?
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Definitely. I think that especially now with the AI part and all of these that you have a lot of cost drivers that generate a lot of cost impact in the consumption and you can say like free tier or subscription based and then you realize that you're spending more on your customer than you are generating from them. That's crucial. Right.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: And the other side, if your preview theory is expensive enough to compensate, that will be okay.
But for most of this kind of companies the free customers are huge and bigger, not amount and different. So I think it's worth it to adjust the features you are offering in your free trial or rethink the architecture of your application or things like that.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, for doing these adjustments like what do you think are the metrics that actually matter most when you are measuring FinOps success, FinOps implementation on your site?
[00:04:35] Speaker B: One of the things is the allocation.
You have to be able as I mentioned before to know who is spending what and then also the commitment, coverage, the waste, the predictability also as we put it. And also I think another important thing is to mention that some metrics should be connected to the business. So just an amount of money you are spending.
So always manage this with revenue or with some product or business metrics.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I think as well that connecting to business is the most like important thing. That's probably what, what you know drove me to, to finance is like okay this is business related. This is cloud, you know, management with business like and I like a lot the business side and the finance side of things. So you always need to relate to, to how the business is going because that's what's going to matter at the end of the day to the company.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I can, I can remember some of our first conversation. I you know more than one year ago. I know how many times yes we were talking about that. I think it's very, very, very important and so on. At the end of the day the business is with driving the company. So everything you are doing you have to connect to the business and to deliver value added services.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's why one of the reasons I think that FinOps is not going to disappear tomorrow because it's such related to the business value and business value is what drives the economy that it's not going anywhere else. If cloud cost and especially with the expansion to Cloud plus continues then all the ideas spend is going to be probably under the practice. So talking about the cost and what, what's the you Know the mistake in, in finos that you have seen that is the most expensive one that you know or you have heard of.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: I can't remember something specific but nowadays I. It's always surprised me.
There are a lot of companies with a lot of waste buying end resources, you know like rds, disk ABS with the machines. And when I said big amount or huge amount, it's like thousand of resources and still is surprising me because you know, it's a lot of, a lot of money.
So wasting a lot of money I can understand.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. I think that you know, waste detection is also one of the. When I see like, you know I analyze lots of content, I see like trends on the, on the what people are searching for. Waste detection is one of the most.
As long as you know automation and of course phenos for AI which is like other type of waste. So definitely some of this are very important and I think it's like the very first topic. You have your architecture and your resources as efficient as possible and without waste. And then from there you know, you can improve and you can make it better.
But you know, waste detection is some of the things that needs to be.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: This is also related to what we were talking before to the business value.
I know some companies maybe starting doing finops on the cost. They have the visibility to the cost, they want to reduce the cost but they are not focusing on what is driving this cost.
If you start in that way you have to look for okay, this cost comes from here and it's causing this cost. And these resources, what is this resources using for? And then you realize that the resources is residing and you are not using it at all and then running it per moment. But if you only focus on the cost maybe you, you lose that.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Definitely, you know, you definitely need to be related to, to that. And you know also one of the, when I was saying the hottest topics is that one of the most repeated topics is the, you know, the executive buying. How do you get executive to take action on FinOps and you know all these topics to, to get leadership involved in the. The process. So what do you think are the executive decisions that FinOps has enabled that weren't possible before or weren't aware before for the executives?
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the decisions maybe remain the same because that's the executive jobs. You have to make decision.
But the difference I think is the way they are facing the decisions. I think now they can make decision with better information, better data. So they could be smarter decisions and definitely more informal. So this is about investment, about planning where to work, to place workload, for example. So these kind of things that they are before fiat, but now I think they can and do it in an innovative way.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's the informed decision to have in the context to take the right decision on that. So talking about the context is like for you or from your experience, how do you translate the cloud cost or the IT cost information to insights that executive people can take action upon?
[00:10:46] Speaker B: I would say adding context. No, I think the business context is very important because just the cost number means little nothing you can spending more than last year.
This could be a good view if your revenue is going higher than your cost. So I think you must show the value IT or technology is adding to the business.
And also depending on the audience, the C level or the subjective you are in front of, you must adapt your metric. Maybe if you are with a finance Persona, maybe the predictability or the accuracy of the budget is more important.
And if you are with a business or product Persona and connecting that spend with the revenue or the product metrics or the features you are delivering is this kind of things.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I totally agree. You know, putting the things in perspective now that we have, well, such amount of Personas or different people involved in the different amount of stakeholders involved in the process. Right. And you know, one of the things that that have been important in FinOps has been the visualization. You mentioned it before and dashboarding has been one of the first steps where FinOps started going. And for you, what does a good FinOps dashboard look like for an executive? What does it have to be on that dashboard question?
[00:12:30] Speaker B: I think the bench, the whole button.
But I think the main thing is that it has to be simple, pretty simple. Less is more in these cases because they usually have some time and they need to see quickly the value of enums. And I would say it should have maybe one number about the current cost for this model for the quarter and also the trend of the cost for comparing to last month to last question, then a tracking or comparative between the forecast and the margin and then some KPI. Also about efficiency. I think it's also very important that maybe the coin or the effective simulator or something like that to track the efforts in the optimization the FinOp stream are doing and from that maybe include metrics connecting this spend to the business that we were saying before. So cost per use, rate of translation, things like that are very simple.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I totally agree. I think relating it to the business, which is something that they should always care about and you know, being able to track the evolution as well. Like you can have the, the two metrics like the, you know, cost per whatever and then the, you know, the revenue per user and the cost per user, let's say. And you have it as a trend. That's a fairly simple thing that you can do. And you can change user for, you know, order whatever so that you can track how the, how the cloud cost is impacting, you know, the, the business.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you have to, to find or to talk with the business people to find the better metric or the important business for them, for that business and try to reflect that in your last.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And you know, let's say, let's imagine that we are, you know, these KKP people that is in charge of the class goes and you know, they are seeing these, let's say these dashboards. So if you were in that position, what do you think are the questions that executives should be asking to their teams that you think they are not asking right now and should impact their workflow?
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Well, I'm saying maybe this is a bit.
But yeah, maybe stop asking just about the cost and start asking more about the efficiency, about the, the outcomes they are the business are achieving from it, from technology.
You know, things like always our technology spend compared to our revenue, you know, are we getting more value in the products or areas where we are investing more or so maybe we have to change our focus to invest more in other, in our approach features or, you know, how much revenue is this new feature we just launched living.
It's worth it to continue developing the feature or we have to take another path, things like that.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say that's very sort of good question. I think it's, you know, my experience with, with executives is that the first questions are like let's reduce cost, let's reduce. And that's because normally there is a lot of ways which makes totally fine. Like probably like the first question, see, FinOps is going to be related to like cost reduction. And then from there you build upon the practice to drive to business value. Right. Like they understand a lot the business value orientation more than probably, you know, engineers like me or you know, finance. Well, finance even maybe a bit about product.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: All of these people, right, that's what I will say.
If you are able to speak the same language that they are speaking, it will be easier to engage with them to have this executive.
And I think from that point your work will be easy.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And also you can, you Know, if you are lower in the, let's say in the, in the company hierarchy, you can always, you know, get first your manager involved, understand that your manager and then you know they'll be able to, to help you upon. If you have like a, I always say that if you have a, a good manager, then in the, in the professional side you have most of it for, for helping you achieve your, you know, your goals and being able to, to achieve your objective. So you know, go slow but go with the right support that you can get, you know, cleanups on your company.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Yeah, just focus just in the, in the cost is, you know, they, yeah, sometimes they can see the cost. You know, to see the cost for the last month is very easy. You can go to whatever tool or whatever native scanner tool and that's easier.
But then you have to add this business context to the cost, the allocation part, you know, these kind of things. That is not just the cost and the visibility. You have to grow your idea.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I think you know, because without the business value doesn't mean anything. A company could be, you know, let's say Google costs are probably like monstrous and then if you are a small company and you have that cost, you're probably, you know, on bankruptcy. So you always need to drive the value and the revenue to that. So but you know, you know, thinking about, you know we have talked about the importance of finop, the executives and you know, talking about roles.
I would like to know like. Well, you can talk to the audience about your story about how you involved in finos because we discussed this before in Spanish episode. But you know, what's your, your story in phenops and for from your perspective, who should be considering a career in, in phenoms?
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Well, I my, my background, I was a physical, physical therapist physiotherapist some years ago.
Yeah. Then I I decided to, to move to, to a career in technology and cloud specifically.
And I always have a lot of interest about the companies, the business, the finance side.
I was also an entrepreneur before that and when I faced spinners, I think it's perfect fit which makes in this part of technology more technical side than the business and the finance side. And I think very broad.
Maybe as people maybe like you, you are an engineer and you have more curiosity about business and finance or the other way around.
You come from finance business and you're interested in efficiency.
You know, I think in the phenomenal community or the phenomenon world we are seeing many, many different roles and many different people coming from different backgrounds.
You know, some, I think another role I seen an oldest night product managers that they are used to work with people from different teams at the end. And this is what finos about a very important piece of phenotype and they are just me. So maybe it's also a good partner.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. After all, you know there is multiple roles that you can do. You can do more analysts type of work then you can do more engineering type of work with these automations and all of that. And then of course you have the management side which is like you're leading a team that is specialized on finops. And then of course we have the finest part, we have the procurement people which is dealing with all the contracts, the renewals, the licensing, the agreements, the discounts, all of that, which is I think one of the interesting things and also the finest people that is like making the magic in the, in the accounting side together.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Yeah, there is a lot of, a lot of managing people, different kind of people with different interests at the beginning but to be able to connect them and to work for the same role.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. That's one of the. I think one of the most interesting thing in spinoffs is the variety and the diversity of roles and you know, with this diversity of roles what do you think are the skills that are most valuable when you are entering in phenoms independently of the role you are coming from?
[00:22:21] Speaker B: I would say I always believe in curiosity.
You have to be curious, you have to have this feeling that you must know or learn different things and grow in your learning career.
And also the teamwork, the empathy. You have to be able to position yourself in someone's role to see, to understand what are their interests and then also some technical skills and what business finance that's hiding.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I think you have to be like hack of all trades, let's say. So you need to master like a lot of things, you need to know finance, terminologies, you need to know a bit of engineering or let's say contracting. Well if you are in procurement it's less but after all you'll end up learning and you know, it's a lot of skills. And also you know, on the soft skill side what do you think is, you know the 2, 3 most important apart from the curiosity that you just.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Mentioned, I think the ability to communicate properly to.
Yeah, to prioritize also because when you start phenos you are seeing a lot of different possibilities or recommendations or activities to develop and you have to understand what is more important than the others and to prioritize that and yeah, and I think it's to communicate properly to the rest of the teams and drive them to work together.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Yeah, that's totally driving. Communication is one of the most important things probably in life, in life as well.
So it's, it's definitely one. And also you know, being able to transmit and adapt the message as we just mentioned to you to the right audience, it's, it's key, you know. But I'm curious because I've seen like I see a lot of questions, a lot of comments on the careers, on the roles, on phenoms, how it's going to be, etc. All the evolution because it's a very early, let's say practice. So where do you see like phenops careers or phenops roles evolving in the next let's say three to five years? I know it's, it's very difficult but what's your guess to say?
[00:25:01] Speaker B: I think yeah, because nowadays with this, all this technology evolution, AI and everything to predict something, you know, for the next year.
But yeah, I'm seeing as you mentioned before talking about the roles and everything, I'm seeing some trends like one is this phenox role in a vendor, in a finox vendor, the expert in the Finox domain and helping internally with the FinOps language to product, to sales, to everything within the company but also helping outside the company to the customers to adopt their field of practice around the platform, the tool they are selling.
And I think this kind of role, it's very useful and I think this kind of companies, they give more and more this role.
Another role maybe is the more classic finops engineer, let's put it that way, which I think automation has to be mandatory and you have to automate as many processes as possible and then another role is like the Phenox head of finops or finop lead or things like that and managing the strategy around finops within the company, relations with our teams, with executives, we were talking the collaboration and all of that which I think maybe will change the focus or broader the scope beyond cloud and a lot more technology spent But I think at the end the high level activities.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Will.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Be very, very similar maybe with a more human component and here maybe the AI, I don't know the role of the AI in this kind of relations, these kind of things.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I totally see that and also I would add that the procurement people are getting more specialized people in procurement for, for finops like very into that specific role and not you know, every procurement thing like you Know, a specialized finops for procurement people would be very interesting to see because I happen to know like of course I know Alexa from, from, from the Finos Cash Flow newsletter and I know other people and you know they are like their knowledge is super, super specific and super valuable because they manage like huge amount of money that way more than I can be doing in the engineering side. So they are crucial to, to the finish, right?
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Out of the commitments, the contracts and the licenses and all that, I think they're becoming more and more important and also we have seen that in the last forklift release they have a specific data set for that contract and commitment. So yeah, it's becoming more and more relevant.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, that's why one of the thoughts that I had when I started that definite scraps flow initiative, it's like, okay, I don't have the space or the knowledge to have these people at room but I want them to be involved. And then it's like let's put like their separate stuff because they like they are super important to the finance practice and they need their own space because it's fairly different of what an engineering or someone more technical would do. But you know, I'm thinking about the, you know, if someone, let's say that is listening to us today and you know, they want to start their finish journey like you know, tomorrow on this Christmas, they want to prepare on Christmas. What's the one thing or the advice that you will give them to do on Christmas side?
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Well, I mean nowadays start learning something new is easier. I'm not even.
You have a lot of information on the Internet, you know with the Tantricity or Gemini of the world.
But what I would say start with phenops.org workplace that has tons of content covers to Phenox Phoenix for Nations YouTube channel. We got the summits and Phenix external and join the community.
And the best thing I think is reaching out to people to ask questions. I think we all have been there asking questions.
So yes. And also your work weekly is also delivering a lot of articles every week and they're very useful and, and it's a good place to summarize everything what is happening in the Philippe space.
Yeah, but I think definitely talk to people, reach out to some people and yeah, this is the best way to learn something new.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I think in the past episode with Alexa we talked about that she just reached out and she comes from the, you know, from teaching which is like English literature teaching. And it was like how do you make a transition out there. And he was saying, he was talking about the interacting with people, being able to talk, understand how it's working, how it's going.
You know, mentioning joining the community such as mine on the newsletter or all of that. So you have like a lot of information that the different communities pull and you know I'll have all the links on that. If you, if people want to join and you know, start working and start understanding you will see like from repetition you will the knowledge and you will see like okay, certain terms are what, what is this term? Then you'll dive deep and that's I think what happened. We go to the rabbit hole and to understand all the language I think it's one of the most important things because otherwise you wouldn't understand hell of a thing that people are talking about. Right.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: I think start with the.
Assuming you content and start with the, with the theoretical concepts and then you have to learn this to the reality. And I think talking to people that's the point where it's more helpful to listen to real stories and to.
Yeah.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And also have to say that you know from, from the beginning like joining this community like the Finops community is one of the most like open minded in terms of like the people is always open to, to talk like as you know and I thought like you know since the beginning and I had like no idea about what Finos was and you know I met like a lot of wonderful people from, from that side. So people is always open to you to talk and people is always open to you know, in any kind of level, any kind of things like if you are very new or if you are, you know, an advanced practitioner. The people is. And the community is always wanting to welcome more and to help you. Right.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: You think that what you are asking is very silly.
It's not. You know, I think we are, we all have this kind of questions and always doubts to reach out to people asking this but I think it's worth it to ask every question you have and as you mentioned I think everyone is very open. I can't complain with other community in technology because I, I come from another background but yes and also if someone want to reach out to me, I'm willing to help anyone in the journey. I'm not everything in the journey. I'm not everything.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.
I'll leave all the links to contact us in the description but contact and reach out and get more people involved in this wonderful practice. So if you want to know more about spectacular career transitions to freedom such as the one that borrowed her heart. We had the episode with Alexa which comes from teaching English literature to becoming a Phenoms author and the creator of the Phenoms Cash Flow newsletter. If you want to know more about her story, please listen to this episode. I think that was all for today. Borja. It was a pleasure to have you. It was a pleasure to know more about the executive side which you are mostly related on and the importance of phenoms and how to have a good career. So great to have your story and thanks for being here today.
A pleasure and see you all in the next episode. Bye Bye.
