“A lot of people think that hey, once you’ve sold the deal, that’s where it ends. But actually, in the agentic era, post-sales are more critical than they ever have been before,” AWS’ global channel chief Ruba Borno tells CRN.
Amazon Web Services worked with partners for a year to create its new Business Value Realization Competency and framework to drive partner post-sales revenue and AI business outcomes, while incentivizing partners with new funding, toolkits and $50,000 in marketing development funds (MDF).
“A lot of people think that, hey, once you’ve sold the deal, that’s where it ends. But actually, in the agentic era, post-sales are more critical than they ever have been before,” AWS channel chief Ruba Borno told CRN.
AWS wants to drive more customer wins and revenue for AWS partners who provide successful business outcomes for customers around AI governance, change management and overall ROI.
“I meet with customers every single day: CIOs, CXOs, CEOs, CFOs—they’re wondering, ‘What value am I going to get out of all of the money that I’m spending on AI capabilities?’” she said.
[Related: AWS Marketplace Lowers Partner Fees In ‘Game-Changer’ Channel Move]
“That’s why we developed BVR in collaboration with our partners to be able to have partners that you can count on who can say, ‘This is the value that you’re signing up for. This is the business case that you’re signing up for. And now, here’s an amazing approach that we have seen tested time and time again to demonstrate the value,’” said Borno, vice president of global partners and specialists.
Partners Get $50K MDF, Workshops, Post-Sales Support And Funding
BVR Competency partners can receive $50,000 in MDF, gain priority placement in Partner Solutions Finder, get access to post-sales support and extra partner funding for successful client outcomes.
AWS is giving partners funding tied directly to customer outcomes, not just delivery milestones, with automated requests through AWS Partner Central.
The Seattle-based cloud leader is also giving partners a toolkit that provides benchmarks, market intelligence, value drivers, and business case models, as well as templates for planning and business value calculations across AI transformation use cases.
“AWS wants to start seeing customers who are using AI-based solutions start to actually see and realize real business benefit from it versus just doing POCs,” said Justin Copie, CEO of Innovative Solutions, an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner.
“They’re kind of requiring you to prove that customers are seeing the value from technology usage,” Copie said. “We essentially do that today. I don’t think every business does. [AWS] is really trying to push for that going forward. Because at the end of the day, if a customer is seeing value from it, they’re going to keep buying.”
Additionally, AWS is giving partners BVR-focused hands-on workshops, adoption playbooks and self-service learning on AWS Skill Builder.
AWS partners with the BVR Competency also get access to specialized post-sales support to build and scale customer success capabilities.
AWS Change Management Push With BVR
AWS BVR partners help customers move beyond technical implementations by building Value Realization Plans that tie AWS workloads to specific business outcomes, guiding adoption through to measurable results.
Borno said one key use case AWS wants to drive is around change management in the AI era.
“We’ve seen that the amount of effort that needs to go into change management is non-trivial,” she said.
“It’s about making sure that the customers are able to overcome some of the change management hurdles for their own employees and teammates, and adopting the technology to get value out of it that’s driving up customer satisfaction or a better employee experience or driving up efficiency,” said the AWS channel chief.
AI Governance Focus And ROI Calculator
Another big focus for BVR is around AI governance for AWS customers.
“Yes, you want individuals to innovate in an amazing and faster way than they ever have been before, but you need to make sure you’re not then creating a lot of risks from a governance perspective or a security perspective,” Borno said.
“So we provide some methodology and tooling on that, inclusive of Bedrock AgentCore, which allows customers to be able to deploy and manage agents in a governed environment that’s deploying their policies and applying their policies across all of the agents in their space,” she said.
AWS is also offering an AI ROI calculator and framework to help partners and customers find the correct return on investment they desire.
“So having a conversation with a customer on what return on investment they should expect from deploying this and then measuring the results on how closely they’re achieving that return on investment— that’s something that we’re really excited about,” Borno said.
Outcomes-Based Pricing Is ‘Future State’
The new BVR Competency identifies channel partners who demonstrate expertise in helping customers connect their AWS technology investments to business value such as cost savings, productivity gains, or revenue growth.
“AWS is recognizing where outcomes-based pricing from partners is a future state—I think that’s a real thing,” said Innovative Solutions CEO Copie.
Copie believes instead of a typical upfront fixed fee for the deployment and management of a solution on a customer deal, partners may share the risk with customers around outcomes.
“What could exist in the future is where instead of pricing at a fixed fee, you will see partners in some instances, actually sharing some of the risk with the customer to see that actual outcome,” Copie said.
“So instead of us doing a fixed fee upfront, it might be, ‘Well, if you see a 5 percent increase in utilization, Innovative wants to share in some of that cost savings. And so you would pay us ‘X’ percentage,” he said. “That’s a really novel and progressive way to not only price, but to engage with a customer. I think AWS is teeing up partners to get ready for that.”
Borno expects to onboard hundreds of new partners to the BVR framework.
“We went from about 12 launch partners to now over a hundred,” she said. “So we’re going to see that number grow exponentially.”
