About Choice Hotels International
Choice Hotels International is one of the largest lodging franchisors in the world, with more than 7,000 hotels in over 40 countries. Spanning the upscale, midscale, extended-stay, and economy segments, Choice Hotels offers both business and leisure travelers a variety of high-quality and high-value lodging options worldwide.
Choice Hotels's FinOps Challenges: in Cloud Transformation
In 2018, Choice Hotels embarked on a cloud transformation, transitioning fully to AWS to meet growing digital demands. The shift brought the need for rigorous cost management, which they approached through FinOps principles to maintain a clear, accountable budget. However, managing a large, complex cloud infrastructure posed challenges, especially with only one team member overseeing costs across such an extensive operation.
Initially, Choice Hotels used a different legacy platform to track expenses and allocate costs. As their architecture expanded in complexity, they recognized the need for enterprise, depth of insights, and more advanced cost management solutions. Choice Hotels began searching for a solution that could keep up with their evolving needs, deliver accurate cost data, and support an increasingly mature cloud architecture.
Why Finout
After reviewing various FinOps tools, Choice Hotels selected Finout due to its ability to meet immediate and long-term needs and its strong customer support. The decision was based on four key factors:
- Time-Saving - Automating operational tasks like cost reporting would save time for strategic initiatives such as identifying cost-saving measures.
- Comprehensive Run Rates - Finout offered full visibility into compute run rates, including complex services like Fargate and EKS.
- Accurate Amortization and EDP Management - Finout’s ability to accurately and automatically account for amortized costs and enterprise discounts ensured the precise financial tracking that the company was looking for.
- Empowered Decision Making - Teams can create their own dashboards to track costs and make data-driven decisions relevant to their specific KPIs.
Finout’s instant Virtual Tagging and MegaBill features were key differentiators that swayed Choice Hotel’s decision. Real-time and accurate tracking of all services by environment and cost center allowed seamless cost allocation and reporting.
“Finout is a game-changer for us. When I get a million-dollar AWS bill, I can determine within a minute how much to charge each cost center with complete confidence. The accuracy of the data ensures that our teams can independently create their own dashboards and monitor costs without needing to come to me. We chose Finout because it provides reliable, actionable data that scales with our needs.”
Mike Routier | Manager, Cloud FinOps
The Result
Finout has significantly improved how Choice Hotels handles its cloud costs, providing clear cost allocation and quicker identification of inefficiencies. This partnership has allowed them to focus more on strategic cloud growth while maintaining cost control.
Cost Allocation
Choice Hotels relies on Finout’s Virtual Tags to allocate 98.8% of its cloud spend accurately by cost center and environment. The system automatically handles amortizations, credits, and reserved instances, streamlining reconciliation and reducing manual tasks.
“Before Finout, people would pull a report and then come to me and ask if they could trust these numbers. Often, the answer was no because key data like amortizations and discounts weren’t included.”
Mike Routier | Manager, Cloud FinOps
Cost Savings
Finout’s CostGuard helps teams quickly find and fix inefficiencies. For example, teams identified decommissioned applications still running, leading to cost savings. The flexibility of Finout lets teams track cloud spending based on their own KPIs, improving cost management. Since implementing Finout, inefficiencies have been resolved 50% faster.
“The information is savvy and actionable. Teams know what should be running and can easily spot areas for cost savings. Seeing the impact their direct actions can have motivates them and holds them accountable.”
Mike Routier | Manager, Cloud FinOps
Increased Efficiency
Finout has helped Choice Hotels streamline cloud operations, keeping costs stable even as usage grows. By eliminating inefficiencies, they’ve shifted focus from day-to-day operations to long-term strategic goals. Financial reporting, once a three-day task, now takes just five minutes, saving valuable time.
With Finout as the central source of truth, teams across the organization have better visibility into cloud spending, which has improved transparency and reduced friction between departments.
“Now, instead of me telling people what their spend is, they can instantly see it in Finout and we can focus on improving efficiency and hitting KPIs.”
Mike Routier | Manager, Cloud FinOps
From Cloudy to Full Visibility
In just under a year, more than 50 active users at Choice Hotels are using Finout to monitor cloud costs. This has freed the Cloud FinOps team to concentrate on strategic objectives rather than day to day operations.
By providing accurate cost allocation and fast identification of cost savings, Finout has changed how Choice Hotels manages its cloud costs and is a true partner that enables them to focus more on strategic cloud growth and efficiency.
Ongoing Partnership and Forward-Looking Initiatives
At Choice Hotels, we see Finout as a key partner in refining our cloud cost management. The collaboration has helped us make real progress in driving a finops culture. Finout’s responsiveness to our feedback and commitment to customer-centricity are evident in the way they adapt and evolve their solution to meet our unique needs.
For example, we’re collaborating closely on enhancing anomaly detection, allowing us to receive only the most relevant alerts. Additionally, Finout’s willingness to adapt their dashboard customization options—such as personalized color schemes and extended cost views—illustrates their commitment to creating a platform that genuinely aligns with our goals. It is comforting to know that the Finout team is just as invested in our success as we are.
