IT operational spend is the fastest-growing cost center in your organization. Cloud costs are up 20-40% annually. Oracle, SAP, and IBM contracts renew at 5-8% increases. SaaS sprawl is everywhere.
Your CFO sees the total on the P&L but lacks the technical context to know what's waste versus what's essential. Your CIO understands the systems but faces skepticism from finance about every investment.
The result: IT optimization stalls because nobody has the peer benchmarks to bridge the gap.
This is the problem The Ops solves.
What The Ops Is
The Ops is a global peer community for CFOs, CIOs, Finance Directors and Infrastructure leaders who need to demonstrate excellence in IT operational spend. It covers:
- Vendor optimization strategies (third-party support, SaaS consolidation, cloud architecture)
- IT Opex benchmarking (what should you spend per employee? per revenue?)
- Risk mitigation frameworks (how to optimize without breaking things)
- Finance-IT alignment practices (how the best partnerships actually function)
Why It Exists
After working with 100+ organizations on IT operational performance, the pattern is consistent:
Finance sees opportunity for optimization. IT sees necessary spend. Both are right. Neither has the data to prove it.
CFOs need technical validation that alternatives to Oracle/SAP/IBM are safe. CIOs need financial benchmarks to defend essential infrastructure or show that optimization is achievable.
The conversations that enable alignment happen peer-to-peer, not in vendor sales calls or consultant reports.
Who's In The Room
1000+ finance and IT leaders from mid-market to FTSE 250 and Fortune 500:
- CFOs who need to explain IT spend to the board
- CIOs managing cost pressure while maintaining reliability
- Finance Directors building business cases for optimization
- VPs of Infrastructure making vendor decisions with budget constraints
- Procurement teams negotiating contracts at the finance-IT intersection
The community works because everyone in the room has identical problems and no incentive to sell you anything.
What Members Actually Get
IT Opex Benchmarks What's normal IT spend as % of revenue by industry? What should cloud costs be per employee? How much should Oracle support cost versus third-party alternatives?
Peer data that lets both finance and IT know if you're overspending, where investment is justified, and where alternatives exist.
Vendor Optimization Case Studies Real examples from CFO-CIO partnerships who've moved to third-party Oracle support, consolidated SaaS, or renegotiated cloud contracts.
Not the business case or the technical diligence in isolation—both perspectives together. The financial savings AND the risk mitigation that made it possible.
Monthly Collaborative Sessions Live discussions featuring finance-IT pairs walking through third-party support evaluation, cloud cost optimization, vendor negotiation, and how they achieved alignment.
The questions are as valuable as the presentations because everyone's solving the same problems.
Private Network Direct peer access. Slack workspace. The trusted relationships that let you ask: "Has anyone actually switched from Oracle support to Origina? What really happened?"
Why This Matters To You
Your board is asking why IT spend keeps growing faster than revenue.
Your CFO is looking for optimization opportunities but doesn't know what's safe to cut.
Your CIO is defending every dollar but lacks benchmarks to prove current spend is justified or show where optimization is achievable.
This dynamic - finance questioning everything, IT defending everything, nobody with data - is costing you money and capability.
The Ops gives your finance and IT leaders the peer intelligence to align.
How To Use This
If your CFO and CIO are aligned on IT Opex: They should join The Ops to stay ahead of optimization opportunities.
If there's tension between finance and IT on spend: The Ops provides the neutral ground and peer data to enable productive conversations.
If IT spend is growing and you don't have visibility: Your CFO and CIO need to be in this community yesterday.
Sessions are peer-led. No sales pitches.
Join The Ops: theops.tech or drop us a line for more details.
Or forward this to your CFO/CIO with: "Thought this might be useful."