How CloudSmart is delivering sales, product, and marketing insights through embedded analytics with Amazon QuickSight

This is a guest post co-authored by CloudSmart and RISCPoint.

CloudSmart is a provider of sales intelligence for software sellers using AWS Marketplace. Servicing hundreds of customers using their platform, they deliver actionable sales insights and data through the CloudSmart Insights dashboard, which is curated for each specific seller.

CloudSmart aims to provide a software as a service (SaaS) solution that boosts go-to-market (GTM) and co-sell strategy by giving their customers an in-depth, tailored dashboard of valuable insights into their selling, marketing, and product performance.

They achieve this by removing the guesswork for AWS Marketplace sellers, or the need for manual authoring and analyzing of reports. Sales data, forecasting, and visualizations are provided, without the need for business intelligence (BI) specialists or data science expertise.

That also extends to discrete customer information, which can be used within the AWS co-sell process for subscriber accounts, and payer account domains that interact with free trials, paid listings, or BYOL offers.

In this post, we discuss how CloudSmart partnered with Amazon QuickSight to enhance the speed, experience, and data depth of its offering for one of its major customers, RISCPoint, a cybersecurity and compliance specialist.

The need for enhanced, embedded data analytics

CloudSmart decided to take a closer look at the architecture and systems that RISCPoint had, and observed that they that were working in non-optimal workflows. They saw an opportunity to help them to enhance the data they could collect and how they analyzed it, for an even better AWS Marketplace experience.

RISCPoint was still using the raw CSV data extracted from AWS Marketplace, and had to manually comb through that data to find insights. Additionally, the process wasn’t standardized, with different software and tools being used by RISCPoint sellers as they sought to find the best way to assess their GTM strategy and sales performance.

As a result, there was also a long turnaround time for reports, which, in the dynamic world of online software sales, meant that strategy decisions were slower than they would have liked. By partnering with the right BI and data analytics partner, there was a great opportunity for CloudSmart to have a positive impact on customers like RISCPoint.

Prioritizing data analytics importance

There were three main reasons that RISCPoint decided to partner with CloudSmart, which is powered by Amazon QuickSight Embedded Analytics. This was in addition to the fact that RISCPoint customers all operate within the AWS ecosystem via Marketplace, an additional factor that meant the systems would operate effectively.

• Amazon QuickSight serverless architecture – Having a serverless architecture meant that RISCPoint could drastically reduce the amount of time and resources that they spent on operations. This allowed them to focus on the main aims of their business, rather than working to make sure their data insights were running effectively.
• Embedded analytics – Being able to embed QuickSight into CloudSmart Insights allows AWS Marketplace sellers to use the systems they have already found to be effective. This also decreased the amount of individual configuration CloudSmart helped their customers undertake in order to get to the data that they wanted to examine.
• APIs for automation and extension – Finally, the built-in QuickSight embedding APIs empowered RISCPoint to connect new datasets together and bring them under the analysis of QuickSight intuitively.

Building one-stop insight at speed and scale

CloudSmart’s main goal working with RISCPoint was to deliver embedded data analytics for their sellers, focusing on an intuitive user experience, comprehensive datasets, and fast, actionable insight.

With QuickSight, they pulled data directly from AWS Marketplace’s seller profiles into the CloudSmart Insights solution, which gave RISCPoint the basis to curate their BI and measure KPIs as accurately as possible. The following diagram illustrates the solution architecture.

Access was managed securely through corporate single-sign-on systems, or any other identity system in place, to enforce watertight access to data. This gave RISCPoint curated visuals and dashboards, embedded within CloudSmart’s solution.

The following screenshot shows an example dashboard, powered by QuickSight, within CloudSmart Insights.

With the power of AWS fueling these systems, they could achieve the necessary speed and scale, drastically reducing the time spent finding important data trends and insights that shape their GTM strategy.

Major sales impact, delivered intuitively

The impact of QuickSight, delivered through the CloudSmart platform, was hugely significant for RISCPoint. Looking at it holistically, their marketing, product, and sales teams all had their ability to gather and analyze data revolutionized.

One of CloudSmart’s cornerstones is giving people this (often complex) information in a way that doesn’t need specialist data expertise or experience. QuickSight offers visualizations that are straightforward to understand, which meant that the GTM strategy could be adjusted far quicker than ever before, sales strategy became data-led, and marketing could effortlessly view the return on their activity.

The headline numbers reinforce the effect this had on the RISCPoint team:

• 50% increase in sales opportunities
• 20% decrease in average deal age
• 60% larger average deal size

With their move to using AWS Marketplace, the business also saw a 15% increase in customer close rates.

And from an operational standpoint, monthly reports were now able to be collated and shared daily, meaning they could address strategy decisions faster than ever before.

Looking to the future

CloudSmart continues to plan new features to deliver for their customers, building on their partnership with QuickSight.

CloudSmart also has plans to introduce Amazon Q in QuickSight into the solution. Amazon Q in QuickSight is a generative artificial intelligence (AI) system that uses large language models to make BI as accessible and fast as possible. You can simply ask the system questions—much like you would a colleague—and have the system interpret and deliver results based on what has been asked.

Exploring QuickSight

To learn more about how QuickSight can help your business create exciting new applications, save on in-house development time, and bring data insights to customers, visit Amazon QuickSight.

About the Authors

Trés Vance is the CTO of CloudSmart LLC. He is an industry leader with a passion for innovation in customer engagement and buying via Cloud Marketplace. He currently holds the position of Cloud Go-to-Market Leader at CloudSmart, leveraging his expertise to help ISV’s achieve their AWS Marketplace commerce goals. Trés is a global traveler, international karaoke star, and renowned BBQ chef. Trés is also actively involved in the AWS Builder Ecosystem holding AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional and AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certifications.

Jacob Nix is the CEO of RISCPoint. He founded RISCPoint with a vision to better integrate with customers and partners, a vision that has created an ecosystem that thrives from a collaborative mindset today where RISCPoint’s clients, partners, and vendors find mutually beneficial systems across the spectrum. Jake maintains active certifications, including Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Baltimore Cyber Range Qualified Assessor, CRISC, CISM, CISA, CDPSE, HITRUST CCSFP, and technology certifications, including Okta Certified Professional and AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner.