As you develop your MSP offering you will need to invest in your people to help them learn more about both Azure and FinOps. Below are some thoughts on a training plan to support this.
One of the key things we are doing with Turbo360 is trying to make Azure cost management simpler and more accessible. While you may need some advanced skills to be successful in Azure, Turbo360 will help bring more people into your FinOps engagements and it will lower the skill and adoption barriers to getting outcomes which matter to your customer.
📚 Training Plan – MSP FinOps Practice
🎯 Goals
Build a baseline FinOps capability across the team (shared understanding).
Develop specialist skills (analysis, automation, finance).
Ensure customer-facing staff can communicate value in business language.
🏗 Role-Based Training Plan
1. FinOps Generalist (Practice Lead / Analyst hybrid at start)
FinOps Foundation Training
FinOps Foundation Practitioner (entry-level) → baseline understanding.
FinOps Certified Professional → advanced, for Practice Lead.
Turbo360
Learn how to use Turbo360
Follow Turbo360 youtube and blogs
Azure Cost Management
Deep dive into Azure Cost Management + Billing, Azure Advisor, Azure Resource Graph.
Power BI / Excel Advanced
Build dashboards, cost models, and reports.
Scenario Training:
Case studies in right-sizing, reservation planning, and cost anomaly detection.
2. Cloud Engineer (automation & optimization focus)
Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) – if not already.
Azure Administrator (AZ-104) – operational focus.
Azure Solutions Architect (AZ-305) – for scaling later.
Infrastructure as Code
Terraform / Bicep training for automation.
Automation Scripting
PowerShell + Python for cost cleanup, scaling scripts.
FinOps-specific training
Modules on automation for idle resources, policy enforcement.
3. Finance Specialist (bridging finance + IT)
FinOps Foundation Practitioner – to understand shared language.
Azure Billing & Invoicing – hands-on with MCA / EA / CSP billing models.
Chargeback / Showback – workshops on cost allocation models.
Finance for Cloud – internal training on interpreting RI utilization, amortization, savings plan models.
Storytelling with Data – communicating technical savings in financial language.
4. Customer Success Manager (communication & reporting)
FinOps Awareness Training – not deep tech, but enough to “speak FinOps.”
Azure Cost Reporting Basics – how to read dashboards & explain trends.
Storytelling Training – presenting savings in customer meetings.
Executive Communication Skills – running CFO/CIO quarterly reviews.
📊 Training Cadence
Month 1–3 (Foundation Phase):
Everyone: FinOps Foundation Practitioner training.
Generalist + Engineer: Hands-on with Azure Cost Management.
Finance: Billing model workshops.
Month 4–6 (Specialization Phase):
Generalist: Power BI reporting & FinOps Certified Professional.
Engineer: Automation / Terraform / Azure Policy enforcement.
Finance: Showback/Chargeback modeling.
CSM: Communication + storytelling.
Month 7–12 (Maturity Phase):
Cross-role workshops: Case studies from your own customers.
Joint “Finance + IT” role-play sessions for customer review meetings.
Begin contributing to a shared internal FinOps playbook.
🛠 Resources
FinOps Foundation:
Practitioner, Certified Professional, FinOps webinars/community.
FinOps Foundation Free Introduction Course - https://learn.finops.org/introduction-to-finops
Microsoft Learn:
Azure Cost Management, Reservations, Savings Plans, Hybrid Benefit.
Certifications:
AZ-900, AZ-104, AZ-305 (engineer track).
Turbo360:
This cost management playbook you are reading now
🚀 Scaling Guidance
Start small: get your generalist trained first — they’ll deliver immediate value.
Cross-train: ensure everyone has at least awareness-level FinOps knowledge (so finance can “speak IT” and engineers can “speak finance”).
Build IP: as your team trains, capture learnings into your own MSP FinOps Playbook → reusable across customers.