The simple way to make your FinOps reporting more relevant to executives and boards

FinOps teams often dream of linking cloud fluctuations to business movements. It sounds ideal: unit economics, perfect attribution and a clean bridge from spend to strategy. The problem is simple. Most of the data that would make this possible is private, sensitive or legally protected. Expecting it to appear in your dashboards, or flow into a SaaS tool, is optimistic.

The result is predictable.
Reports to executives are filled with charts but thin on context.
They describe spend, not pressure.
They explain usage, not meaning.
They tell a technical story to an audience that thinks in business terms.

Yet a large part of the missing narrative is already available for free.
Much of the context that shapes cloud decisions is public: interest rates, inflation, sector trends, vendor performance, energy constraints. These signals have more impact on how a board interprets your cloud curves than another layer of tagging or an extra pivot on the CUR.

If Week One was about why context matters, Week Two is about how to make it real in your work.
And the first step is not internal data.
It is public data — reliable, updated and sitting in plain sight.

Interest rates rise or fall.
Inflation bites or softens.
Industries tighten or relax.
Cloud vendors publish their results.
Power grids strain or stabilise.

These signals shape how executives think about risk, investment and timing.
If your reports reflect them, you sound aligned with the business.
If they do not, you sound like a technician describing a bill.

Public context is the easy win.
It strengthens every narrative you present.
It frames anomalies, explains spend movement and clarifies commitment decisions.
It makes your work sound like strategy, not housekeeping.

FinOps becomes more effective when it stops staring at itself.
Look beyond the graphs.
The world outside your cloud account is part of the story the board expects you to tell.

For tool builders, a deeper guide below explains how these public signals can be integrated directly into FinOps products.

How FinOps practitioners can bring public context into their products

Most FinOps tools reflect infrastructure well.
Few reflect the world that gives those numbers meaning.

Product owners often say they cannot integrate context because they lack access to internal business data.
This guide starts elsewhere.
You do not need private metrics to make your product more intelligent.
You can begin with public signals that shape cloud decisions long before a company pipes in revenue.

Economic signals

Interest rates, inflation, credit conditions.
Use them to frame commitment guidance and adjust the tone of recommendations.

Sector signals

If a customer’s sector is under pressure, your tool should reflect that.
Margin trends and analyst summaries are enough to change how you signal risk and urgency.

Cloud vendor signals

AWS, Azure and Google Cloud publish data that hints at where capacity will expand, slow or tighten.
Integrate CAPEX trends and investment notes into pricing or placement logic.

Energy and resource constraints

Power limits, carbon intensity and GPU availability now influence architecture.
These belong in forecasting and placement models.

Seasonality and market patterns

Public retail, logistics and advertising cycles affect cloud use.
Highlight these patterns alongside anomalies.

My proposed list of links on where to find public data, for the UK and US is available to paid subscribers...come on $10 (or $80 yearly) to get good info and make me a happy person.