How SEEK cut cloud spend by 37% with a finance-first FinOps approach
The challenge: rising cloud costs, limited visibility
Like many large enterprises scaling in the cloud, SEEK was facing rising cloud costs and needed a more structured way to manage them. The pressure was not only to spend less. It was to understand spend properly: where costs were occurring, what was driving them, and how they mapped to the business.
That visibility gap is common. Cloud billing is detailed but rarely financial. Usage data lives with engineering, budgets live with finance, and the two are hard to reconcile. Without a shared view, cost decisions get made late, and accountability is diffuse.
SEEK wanted a disciplined, repeatable approach that would give both finance and technology teams a clear line of sight into cloud consumption, and a way to hold spend to account against business value.
The approach: a FinOps framework, powered by ArCO
The team behind ArCO implemented a cloud FinOps framework designed to bring financial management and accountability to SEEK’s cloud environment. Rather than a one-off cost-cutting exercise, the work established a structure and best practice that the organisation could rely on well beyond the initial engagement.
At the centre of the delivery was ArCO, the proprietary cloud financial intelligence platform. Built on AWS-native tooling, including QuickSight, ArCO gave SEEK a tailored financial reporting and dashboard layer over its cloud estate, aligned to the organisation’s own business units and financial structure. That turned fragmented technical billing into financial reporting that finance leaders could actually use.
Three things made the difference:
- Visibility first. ArCO consolidated cloud consumption into a centralised financial view, so spending patterns, budget adherence and optimisation opportunities could be seen in one place rather than pieced together after the fact.
- Enhanced reporting and insight. The reporting capability surfaced the trends and drivers behind cost movements, giving SEEK the critical insights needed to steer financial strategy rather than simply report on it.
- Accountability as a habit. The framework fostered a culture of financial accountability, embedding cloud cost management as an ongoing organisational focus rather than a periodic clean-up.
As Con Gonopoulos, founder of ArCO, put it, managing cloud cost, usage and environment is genuinely difficult, and by combining hands-on FinOps experience with ArCO, teams can take that pressure off and use the information to make better decisions.
The outcome: 20% down, and a lasting shift
The results were both immediate and structural. SEEK reduced its cloud spend by 20 percent in FY24, with a projected 37 percent reduction in ongoing annualised costs as the framework and optimisation work compounded.
Just as importantly, the engagement changed how the organisation operated. According to Justin Simmons, Chief Technology Officer at SEEK, the work transformed SEEK’s approach to cloud financial management. Beyond the substantial cost savings, SEEK saw a positive shift in organisational culture, with financial management becoming a key focus and enhanced reporting providing the insight to drive financial strategy forward.
That combination, hard savings plus a durable change in behaviour, is the point. Cost cuts alone erode over time. A finance-first operating model keeps working.
Why it matters
The SEEK engagement is a clear proof point for the approach ArCO was built around: bring business context to every cloud dollar, and put finance in control.
Most cloud cost tools are engineering-led and reporting-oriented. ArCO is finance-first by design, connecting technical usage and commercial commitments to budgets, business services and outcomes. Visibility, forecasting, commercial governance and optimisation reconciliation run as one connected loop, so savings are not just identified but verified.
For enterprises watching cloud and AI costs climb, the lesson from SEEK is that the fastest path to control is not another dashboard. It is a financial operating model that makes cloud spend make sense, and a platform built to run it.
At a Glance
- 20% reduction in cloud spend in FY24
- 37% projected reduction in ongoing annualised cloud costs
- A single source of financial truth for cloud, built on AWS QuickSight
- A culture of financial accountability has been established across the organisation
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