Client Success: Home Office with Synyega

The challenge - Rapid cloud usage growth and unpredictable spend

The Home Office operates a large and complex IT estate with cloud environments across several Hyperscalers, with significant annual spend across multiple business areas and product initiatives. Cloud expenditure has been increasing year on year in line with planned growth and the decommission of legacy systems.

While native cloud cost management tools were in use, there was no centralised visibility capacity, meaning there was inconsistent tagging, limited ownership of shared services, and fragmented reporting.

Although there were some strong examples of FinOps good practice, overall maturity across the organisation was uneven. Teams worked separately within the product, platform, engineering, and finance areas. This meant that optimisation efforts were not scaled or shared.  In addition, the segregated reporting constrained decision-making, limited organisational buy-in, and hampered optimisation.

Legacy architectures further limited the ability to optimise quickly, requiring a careful balance between cost efficiency and operational stability. The department needed to deliver tangible short-term savings while building a sustainable, long-term FinOps capability. Crucially, the objective was not to outsource cloud financial management, but to embed a consistent, transparent FinOps practice aligned with software licensing, governance, and sustainability goals, and to make it resilient to future growth and scrutiny.

UK government departments operate under a mandate to maximise value for money, demonstrate responsible stewardship of public funds, and maintain transparency over expenditure. FinOps provides a structured, collaborative approach to controlling cloud costs without constraining innovation, improving forecasting and budget confidence, and demonstrating compliance with public sector financial controls.

Home Office and Synyega collaboration

The Home Office engaged Synyega’s FinOps team to deliver a FinOps Discovery & Roadmap, incorporating detailed FinOps Maturity Assessments.

Synyega conducted a series of maturity assessments across key technology areas to identify strengths, gaps, and opportunities for improvement, while also beginning to build collaboration. In parallel, a programme of Certified FinOps Practitioner training was delivered to upskill teams in best practice. The objective was to improve visibility and control of cloud spend while embedding FinOps practices across the organisation, rather than outsourcing responsibility.

Synyega worked closely with the central FinOps function alongside cloud, engineering, finance, ITAM, and software licensing teams.

Key activities included:

• Conducting FinOps Maturity Assessments to identify strengths, gaps, and prioritised improvement areas
• Delivering collaborative workshops to align stakeholders and break down silos
• Creating a clear roadmap with short-term optimisation actions and longer-term maturity goals
• Delivering Certified FinOps Practitioner training to build internal capability
• Supporting the definition of a cloud tagging policy to improve cost attribution and accountability

Synyega partnered with the Home Office to establish an organisation-wide FinOps capability delivering immediate savings and long-term maturity. Targeted workshops covered cloud cost management, tooling options, automation opportunities, and best practices across ITAM and software licensing. A robust tagging policy was defined, laying the foundation for consistent reporting and accountability across platforms.

Beyond advisory support, Synyega embedded capability by training over 65 staff, running regular workshops, and maintaining ongoing check-ins to reinforce learning and drive adoption. This hands-on approach aligned teams and enabled consistent application of FinOps practices. Within the first year, the department realised over £9m in savings, improved leadership confidence, and established a sustainable framework for continuous optimisation linked to broader organisational objectives.

Outcomes

Within the first year, the Home Office achieved over £9m in savings across its Hyperscalers through a combination of rate and usage optimisation. These changes reduced ongoing risk and prevented unnecessary future spend.

Additional outcomes included:

• Significant progression of FinOps maturity under the FinOps Foundation Crawl Walk Run framework
• Certified FinOps Practitioner training delivered to over 65 staff across engineering, finance, and technology functions
• Improved collaboration between Finance, ITAM, Software Licensing, Engineering, Product Management, and Procurement
• More strategic use of cloud marketplaces and improved procurement decisions
• Strong progress against cloud commitment objectives while maintaining contractual compliance

The value to the Home Office

As a result of this engagement, the Home Office has moved away from one-off cost reduction exercises towards continuous optimisation. With improved maturity and a clear roadmap, the Home Office is better positioned to manage ongoing cloud growth, respond confidently to scrutiny, and ensure cloud investment delivers sustained value for money and resilient public services.

Partnering with a Specialist SME

This engagement also demonstrates the value of government organisations working with specialist small and medium sized enterprises. Rather than defaulting to a large, generalist consultancy, the Home Office selected a niche UK based consultancy with deep expertise in a highly complex and specialised domain.

As a specialist consultancy, Synyega brings targeted knowledge, hands-on experience, and direct access to senior practitioners, ensuring advice is both technically robust and grounded in real-world application.

From the Home Office perspective, this approach supported better outcomes by prioritising specialist insight and aligning expertise precisely to the challenge at hand. It also reflects a mature and considered procurement strategy that recognises the role SMEs can play in delivering high value, differentiated capability within the public sector.

The engagement further illustrates the positive impact of supporting UK small businesses within government programmes. By working with a domestic specialist consultancy, the Home Office not only accessed deep technical expertise but also contributed to the growth and sustainability of a UK SME operating at the forefront of its field.