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A FinOps Case Study: How C4 Technical Services Helped a HealthCare Insurance Company Realize $6.9M in Savings 

Cloud migration is not only a technical change—it’s a financial one. As businesses move to the cloud, managing, allocating, and optimizing costs becomes crucial to their success. Many organizations make the shift for benefits like scalability, better security, operational efficiency, and cost savings.

However, the reality is that a significant portion of cloud budgets often goes to waste. Some businesses over-allocate resources, others struggle to track expenses accurately, and many have idle or underutilized assets that drive up costs unnecessarily.

Our client faced these issues, but we introduced a comprehensive Financial Operations (FinOps) strategy that brought transparency, accountability, and financial efficiency to their cloud operations.

Obstacle

Our client, a healthcare insurance company with over 5,000 employees and annual revenues between $50 million and $100 million, was two years into a major cloud migration when they realized something was missing. Although they had made significant progress, they still hadn’t found a way to fully manage their cloud costs to meet their business needs. 

They needed a clear method to allocate cloud costs accurately to their business units, making sure everyone understood their portion and took responsibility for it.

This required centralizing their FinOps approach and improving alignment between finance, IT, and business leaders. Most importantly, they needed to ensure their cloud investments worked for them, not against them. To solve this, they partnered with C4 Technical Services. 

Solution

We came into the picture and helped them develop a comprehensive FinOps strategy that would not only address their immediate concerns but set them up for long-term success.  

First, we conducted a deep assessment of their current financial operations and IT infrastructure. This allowed us to identify exactly where they stood in terms of FinOps maturity, and from there, we built a strategic roadmap tailored to their specific needs. 

Using industry-standard FinOps principles, we designed a chargeback system to transfer up to 80% of the monthly cloud spending to the application teams. We knew this would be a game changer for the client—getting the right teams to take ownership of their cloud usage would drive accountability and transparency across the organization. Throughout this process, we worked closely with senior IT leadership and the finance department, making sure everyone was on the same page and that we stayed aligned with the company’s broader business goals. 

Outcome

In the first year alone, we helped our client save over $1.5 million. We also helped transfer over 60% of monthly cloud spending directly to application teams, ensuring better financial accountability across the board.

By the end of the three-year rollout, the client had saved an additional $6.9 million through smart reservations and cost-saving plans. And perhaps most importantly, their FinOps maturity improved by a full point, reflecting the progress they made in aligning financial operations with their business goals.

To sustain these results, we implemented real-time analytics and alerts, so the client could continuously monitor and optimize their cloud investments. We also developed repeatable playbooks and tool-agnostic financial management strategies, providing them with the resources needed to keep improving long after our engagement ended.

Impact

For a healthcare insurance provider of this size, managing cloud costs effectively is no small feat. C4 Technical Services’ ability to provide a customized FinOps solution that is aligned with the client’s specific needs is a testament to the effectiveness of our approach. By moving financial responsibility to the application teams, we ensured that the people closest to the cloud spending decisions were the ones making those calls. This shift not only optimized resource usage but also fostered stronger collaboration between IT, finance, and business units.

Thanks to our approach, the client now has deeper insights into their cloud costs, a more transparent process for managing their resources, and a clear path to continued growth. This achievement highlights how a well-executed FinOps strategy can drive both immediate savings and long-term financial maturity.

Take Charge of Your Cloud Costs Today! 

From improved financial visibility and transparency to maximized ROI, experience the difference FinOps can bring to your cloud investments. Partner with C4 Technical Services and experience expertise that delivers real, measurable results.