How Pier Cloud Helped Cielo Gain Visibility and Financial Forecasting

About Cielo

A leading reference in payment solutions across Latin America, Cielo goes far beyond point-of-sale devices. Today, it is recognized as a technology company, delivering digital solutions and critical infrastructure for major players like Facebook and WhatsApp.

With a robust technology landscape, Cielo manages a dynamic, multicloud operation — and it’s precisely in this environment that Pier Cloud stepped in as a strategic partner to simplify cloud management, strengthen governance, and accelerate the company’s FinOps maturity.

Cielo Brands and Products

• Cielo LIO

• Cielo Flash

• Integrated payment solutions

• Cloud infrastructure for large-scale clients

Los desafíos

With high transaction volume and the need to optimize resources, the company required a solution that would deliver visibility, control, and ease of management for its cloud environment — especially AWS.

Cielo’s main issue was clear: too much time was spent on BI, and not enough on actual FinOps.

The team was spending valuable hours collecting and modeling data, manually building reports, and explaining insights to various stakeholders. As a result, they were drifting away from their mission to generate strategic value, and FinOps maturity had plateaued.

Additionally, the lack of clarity about future costs for financial transactions made it harder to analyze and decide where to focus time and budget.

Other challenges included:

• Cost consolidation across multiple environments, such as Sandboxes and Big Data.

• Difficulty accessing the console, which limited technical teams.

• Lack of standardization in showback, leading to fragmented and ineffective governance.

• Slow response to business demands, such as building business cases.

• No visibility into forecasts for key financial products, such as PIX, card, or checking account transactions.

La solución

A través de Lighthouse, the proposal was to automate chargeback creation using Cielo’s own organizational rules within the platform. Previously, AWS cost allocation was done manually using spreadsheets — a process that consumed many operational hours. Once the rules were created, multiple dashboards were built to provide clear cost visibility across teams.

Pier Cloud’s platform uses S3 to collect the client’s AWS billing data. Then, we handle ETL and data processing to construct cost allocation and visibility tailored to the client’s needs. Athena is used to query the information.

Another key factor was the use of automation and cost optimization insights, which helped the team work with greater financial efficiency. In this case, the product used was CCA (Cloud Compliance Analyzer), which delivered optimization recommendations tailored to Cielo’s environment.

CCA collects data via SDK using an assume role in the client’s AWS accounts. With that data, we support clients by identifying idle resources, applying best practices, and proposing technology upgrades — all contributing to a more efficient and optimized infrastructure.

Additionally, the Forecasting process for financial products was designed and implemented inside the platform. Using the business forecasting feature, Cielo’s product teams could accurately project the future costs of card, PIX, and Open Finance transactions. This was possible by combining the company’s organizational hierarchy with the platform’s mathematical forecasting models.

Resultados

Pier Cloud helped streamline Cielo’s operations. The platform enabled Cielo to visualize and control cloud costs far more efficiently, reducing time spent on operational tasks and freeing the team to focus on strategic optimizations. Another key win was the automation of unused EBS volume deletion — a task that previously required manual time and effort. In just 15 days, the rule was live — no deep technical knowledge required.

Unlocked Productivity: The team freed up one full-time equivalent (FTE) who had previously been focused solely on manual BI. Now, that team member contributes strategically, discussing architectures and optimizing workloads.

Data-Driven Decisions: Teams like Big Data started using Pier Cloud workspaces directly to justify project costs and investments — with ready-to-use, reliable visualizations.

Real Cost Reduction: By applying intelligent recommendations, Cielo generated significant savings in a single e-commerce environment, with well-structured reservations.

Expanded Governance: More departments began using the platform — including governance, sandbox, data, and even business teams. This expanded internal sponsorship and consolidated FinOps culture across the organization.

Forecasting Financial Products: By using business forecasting, Cielo’s teams were able to segment their financial products and calculate future transaction costs — including checking accounts, PIX, and Open Finance. With this information, it became much easier for executives to decide on new investments in banking product lines.

Lessons Learned & Next Steps

Due to Cielo’s environment complexity, we faced several challenges when trying to replicate its organizational hierarchy and rules within the platform. The team also went through some turnover, which caused a slight slowdown in the process.

As next steps, the goal is to engage more tech teams in using and spreading the platform and FinOps best practices, with a focus on continuous efficiency gains.