- 01 Top quartile programmes deliver 38% cloud cost reduction within two quarters.
- 02 Median tagging coverage at programme start is 41%; at end of quarter two it is 92%.
- 03 Commitment optimisation alone explains 22% of the saving; the rest is workload-level work.
- 04 Year-two regression occurs in 40% of programmes that lack ongoing FinOps governance.
What the top quartile does differently
The top quartile starts with tagging and ownership, not with commitment optimisation. By the time they reach commitment cycles, they have full visibility into who owns what — and that visibility is what makes the commitment maths work.
The three-phase pattern
Phase 1 (weeks 0–6): tagging, ownership, anomaly detection. Phase 2 (weeks 6–12): right-sizing and architecture review. Phase 3 (week 12 onward): commitments and continuous improvement. Most regressions happen in phase 3 because organisations underinvest in ongoing governance.
The savings curve
Top quartile: 38% by week 24. Median: 19% by week 24. Bottom quartile: 4% — mostly from commitment cycles only, with all the workload-level opportunity untouched.
Year-two regression
40% of programmes regress in year two. The pattern is universal: the FinOps team is reabsorbed into engineering once the immediate savings land, governance lapses, and the bill quietly grows back. The fix is structural — not behavioural.
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