A Total Economic Impact™ Partner Opportunity Analysis for AWS Marketplace sellers

In this blog post, I will summarize the key findings of a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AWS Marketplace in May 2022. This study, the Partner Opportunity for AWS Marketplace Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), offers both qualitative and non-qualitative benefits for sellers who list their software and data products in AWS Marketplace.

The partner opportunity for AWS Marketplace ISVs

According to the Forrester Consulting study, customers aren’t the only ones who benefit from using AWS Marketplace. The Partner Opportunity for AWS Marketplace ISVs study, a Total Economic Impact™ Partner Opportunity Analysis, provides data to show the business benefits achieved when ISVs (sellers) list and sell their products and services in AWS Marketplace.

For this study, Forrester Consulting interviewed 12 existing sellers and surveyed another 60 sellers experienced with AWS Marketplace and aggregated the results into a composite seller.

The key findings were as follows:

• Richer deal sizes. Sellers realized deal sizes 80% larger when transacting on AWS Marketplace.
• Increased win rates. Sellers closed 27% more deals when transacting in AWS Marketplace versus other sales channels.
• Accelerated sales cycle. Sellers accelerated their sales cycle by 40% from five months to three months. They did this by using AWS Marketplace’s standard End User License Agreement (EULA) and templated statements of work (SOWs). Furthermore, by associating with AWS, ISVs benefitted from increased credibility, which helped customers justify and ultimately approve the purchase faster.
• Incremental pipeline contribution. Sellers experienced as much as 20% of their pipeline generated through AWS as their relationship with AWS and AWS Marketplace matured.

Business outcomes achieved from selling in AWS Marketplace

The highest reported business outcome for ISV Partners via the survey was an increase in innovation (63%), followed closely by improved performance or security and compliance (52%), and expanded market size/client base (52%). Refer to the following bar chart, which visualizes these results, along with increased top line revenue and shorter sales cycles (42%), lower cost of customer acquisition, higher conversion rate, and faster deployment times (40%), and lower churn rate (37%).

One-sentence financial summary: benefits of selling in AWS Marketplace

“The representative interviews and financial analysis found that a composite ISV with $10 million in annual recurring revenues experiences total present value (PV) gross profits of $1.4 million over three years versus investments and overhead expenses of $795,000, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $646,000 and an ROI of 81%.”

Conclusion

In this post, I summarized the key benefits of listing in AWS Marketplace, drawn from a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AWS Marketplace in May 2022. This study covers the Partner Opportunity for AWS Marketplace ISVs, a Total Economic Impact™ Partner Opportunity Analysis.

Next steps

• Download the Partner Opportunity for AWS Marketplace ISVs study
• Find out how to sell in AWS Marketplace.

About the author

Heidi Miller is a Senior Program Manager at AWS Marketplace. A content marketing manager at heart, she enjoys driving customer-obsessed strategies for the AWS Marketplace and Control Services blog and social media programs. In her spare time, she loves to swing and salsa dance (pre-pandemic) and enjoys water aerobics, biking, gardening, and running Instagram accounts for her dog and cat.