# COST03-BP04 - Establish organization metrics

Best practice: COST03-BP04
Pillar: Cost Optimization
Source: https://wellarchitected.cloudvisor.eu/docs/cost-optimization/cost03-bp04.html

## Implementation guidance

Establish the organization-specific metrics that translate raw cost and usage
data into business meaning. Absolute spend on its own is rarely actionable;
relating cost to a business output — cost per customer, per transaction, per
environment, or per team — is what lets you judge whether spend is efficient and
whether optimization is working.

### Define meaningful unit metrics

**Identify business output drivers**: Work with stakeholders to identify the
units that best represent the value your workload delivers (for example, active
users, orders processed, API calls served, GB ingested). These become the
denominators for your cost-efficiency metrics.

**Define unit cost metrics**: Combine cost data with the chosen business output
to produce unit-cost metrics such as cost-per-customer or cost-per-transaction.
Track these over time so efficiency trends — not just total spend — drive
decisions.

### Operationalize the metrics

**Tie metrics to organizational structure**: Map metrics to teams, products, or
cost centers using cost allocation tags and account structure so each owner sees
the metrics relevant to them.

**Set targets and review regularly**: Establish targets for key unit metrics and
review them on a regular cadence. Use deviations from target as the trigger for
deeper investigation or optimization initiatives.

**Automate calculation**: Compute metrics automatically from the CUR (queried in
Amazon Athena — the AWS analytics service, not an internal agent — or visualized
in Amazon QuickSight) so the numbers are consistent, repeatable, and current.

## AWS Services to Consider

<div class="aws-service">
  <div class="aws-service-content">
    <h4>Amazon QuickSight</h4>
    <p>Build dashboards that present organization unit-cost metrics to the right owners and surface trends against targets.</p>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="aws-service">
  <div class="aws-service-content">
    <h4>AWS Cost Categories</h4>
    <p>Group costs into business-meaningful categories that align with your organizational structure for metric calculation.</p>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="aws-service">
  <div class="aws-service-content">
    <h4>Amazon Athena</h4>
    <p>Query the CUR (the AWS analytics service, not an internal agent) to compute unit-cost metrics directly from detailed billing data.</p>
  </div>
</div>

## Related Resources

<div class="related-resources">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/framework/cost_monitor_usage_organization_metrics.html">AWS Well-Architected — COST03-BP04 Establish organization metrics</a></li>
    <li><a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/framework/cost-03.html">COST03: How do you monitor your cost and usage?</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>