Cloud Financial Management as a Service (CFMaaS)

We will assist and guide the organisation in:

• defining who can provision resources and under what guidelines to prevent unnecessary spending; and

• implement role-based access control (RBAC) and tagging policies to track and manage costs by departments, projects, or teams.

This is a two step process where we will:

• Set up and manage cost allocation tagging to categorize expenses by team, project, or environment.

• Implement chargeback or show back models, so teams are accountable for their cloud spending - the bespoke model can feed directly in the clients accounting software.

We will look for opportunity to:

• Use reserved instances (RIs) or savings plans for predictable workloads, locking in discounted rates.

• Regularly review and modify RIs or savings plans to ensure they still align with your usage.

We will assist and guide the organisation in minimising data transfers between regions and availability zones, as inter-region transfer fees can add up, by reviewing Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) for distributing content closer to end users - reducing bandwidth costs.

This is a two step process where we will:

• Encourage cross-functional teams (Finance, Engineering, Product) to collaborate on cloud budgeting and cost optimization strategies.

• Regularly review cloud costs against budget forecasts, identifying trends and opportunities to optimize spending.

We can:

• Leverage predictive analytics to forecast future cloud spending, based on current usage patterns, for better budget planning.

• Use forecasting to identify potential upcoming costs associated with scaling projects.

We will assist and guide the organisation in minimising network costs by reviewing plans for network architecture that minimizes data transfer costs, using Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) endpoints, Direct Connect, or ExpressRoute; and plans to deploy services in the same region to avoid cross-region data transfer charges.

In addition to a selection of the above service elements which apply to CCaaS clients, we also offer assistance with:

• Evaluate Pay-As-You-Go vs. Subscription Plans: Choose a pricing model that matches the organization’s needs. Pay-as-you-go may suit fluctuating demands, while subscription plans might offer better rates for steady usage.

• Analyze Call Volume Trends: Monitor peak times and seasonal fluctuations to anticipate demand, allowing adjustments to the plan as needed.

• License Optimization: Regularly audit licenses to ensure the right number of agent seats, removing unused licenses to avoid paying for underutilized capacity.

• Flexible Staffing Models: Use flexible licensing for temporary agents during high-demand periods to avoid overcommitting to long-term licenses.

• Agent Capacity Management: Avoid over-provisioning agent seats by using data analytics to determine the optimal number of seats based on traffic trends.

• Remove Redundant Phone Numbers: Consolidate or remove excess phone numbers, reducing costs associated with maintaining multiple inbound lines.

• Optimize CRM and CCaaS Integration: Ensure data is effectively shared between systems to prevent duplicate storage, minimizing redundancy and associated costs.

• Review SLA Options: Negotiate SLAs that align with the business’s specific needs, avoiding unnecessary costs for service levels that exceed requirements.

• Volume-Based Discounts: If usage is consistently high, negotiate volume-based discounts or long-term agreements for better rates.

• Reevaluate Provider Contracts Regularly: Conduct periodic reviews of provider contracts to identify potential savings or explore competitive providers.

• Incentivize Cost-Efficient Behaviors: Encourage agents to reduce call time, improve first-call resolution, and minimize hold times by incentivizing cost-efficient practices.

• Vendor Reassessment and Competitive Bidding: Reassess vendors annually and explore competitive bids to ensure the organization is receiving the best value.

• Cost and ROI Analytics: Use analytics to track ROI of CCaaS investments, helping justify expenses and pinpoint savings opportunities.

We will manage and assist in:

• Right-sizing: We will assess resource utilization and downgrade or eliminate underused instances.

• Spot Instances: Help you take advantage of contractual spot instances for non-critical, interruptible workloads, significantly reducing costs.

• Instance Scheduling: Assist in the usage of scheduling tools to automatically turn off non-essential resources outside business hours.

• Auto-scaling: Identify opportunities for auto-scaling to scale down resources during off-peak times.

We will:

• Compare pricing across providers and choose cost-effective solutions for specific workloads.

• Assist our client in leveraging hybrid models (on-prem and cloud) to optimize costs for workloads that don’t need the cloud’s elasticity.

Storage costs can quickly compound. We will assist with:

• Storage tiering by identifying infrequently accessed data to move to lower-cost storage tiers.

• Regular audits to delete stale, duplicate, or unnecessary data.

• Snapshot management by implementing policies to delete old snapshots or backups that are no longer needed.

We will encourage the client to:

• Refactoring applications to use serverless or container-based architectures, which can be more cost-effective for certain workloads.

• Implement efficient coding practices to reduce resource consumption and increase application efficiency.

We can assist with:

• Educating teams on cost-effective cloud usage and best practices.

• Conducting monthly or quarterly cost reviews, spotlighting areas of improvement and recognising cost-saving achievements.

We will assist the client with:

• Applying quotas to development, testing, and staging environments to avoid resource sprawl.

• Implementing policies that automatically shut down or delete resources in non-production environments after a certain period.

We will assist the client to regularly audit for orphaned or “zombie” assets like unattached volumes, idle virtual machines, and unused IP addresses, which often contribute to unnecessary costs.