FOCUS standardizes cloud billing data, so connecting a BI tool to a shared warehouse is straightforward. Dashboards-only is easy when you’re just plotting raw fields. The challenge is that core FinOps KPIs—net vs amortized cost, credits/refunds, effective rates, unit costs, and allocation signals—often get re-implemented inside each BI tool and drift over time. FinOps reporting is hard because the important numbers are definitions, not columns.
In this lightning talk, I’ll show a lightweight FOCUS semantic layer pattern—curated “gold” views plus a minimal metrics contract—that lets you define KPIs once and serve any BI provider with thin visuals. This directly supports the FinOps Framework principles that FinOps data should be accessible, timely, and accurate and FinOps should be enabled centrally, by centralizing definitions and delivery while still empowering distributed teams to explore and act. Finally, I’ll show how a semantic layer smooths FOCUS adoption over time: as new versions evolve fields and conventions, you can absorb changes once in the semantic layer rather than refactoring every dashboard.