Gain Insights: How This Free Analytics Program Can Accelerate Small and Medium Businesses

With customer expectations constantly evolving, average can no longer keep up in today’s competitive landscape. Better, faster insights can help businesses uncover new opportunities to move from average to advanced. Data-driven decision-making can help businesses plan improvements to existing products or services, highlight customer service successes and opportunities for engagement, and be more responsive to customers and their needs—quickly and profitably. Fortunately, these actions aren’t only for large or technically-sophisticated companies.

Gaining insights into your business operations is within reach, regardless of your current capabilities. For those who want a more personalized approach, we offer a free AWS Gain Insights program, which allows small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in any industry to work one-on-one with an AWS expert and receive a customized analytics roadmap designed to take your company to the next level. One pre-requisite for participating in the program is that you’re based in North America.

Now, let’s see what the program looks like from your end:

Phase 1: Understanding your SMB

First, you’ll have a couple of one-on-one conversations with an AWS team member whose expertise aligns with your needs. These first chats are all about business—your goals, your vision for your company, and what success would look like to you.

Discussions about technical roadblocks and potential cloud solutions will come later, because we cannot design a customized roadmap without first understanding your business objectives.

When we asked past customers for feedback about these sessions, words like “collaborative,” “informative,” and “clarity” kept popping up. Those are exactly our goals throughout this phase. It’s easy for business leaders to get lost in the technical challenges of building a company from the ground up. We’re here to offer a clear, realistic path to transforming into a data-driven company.

Before meeting for Phase 2, your AWS expert will evaluate which potential cloud solutions align with your idea of success. Then, you’ll meet for a virtual whiteboard session where you’ll have a chance to walk through all of them one by one.

Phase 2: Mapping out the road ahead

Next, you will understand your options for building success and working out which ones will fit your team best. Since this program is specifically customized for your SMB, Phase 2 has looked different for all of our participants thus far. In some cases, we’ve treated immediate technical roadblocks, like cleaning up data sources or implementing easy-to-read business intelligence dashboards.

However, even as we’re helping businesses solve short-term issues, we are approaching it with your long-term business goals in mind. One holistic, big picture view of your business helps us work together to find the ways that cloud and data solutions can serve your business throughout its lifetime.

One SMB participant in the healthcare industry told us this approach “made our whole team look deep into our architectural plans for the future,” helping the entire company speak the same language as they focused on growth.

Phase 3: Moving your SMB forward

Finally, during Phase 3, your AWS expert will provide you with a detailed document that could include:

• Key objective
• Key performance indicators
• Reference architecture
• Price estimates
• Sizing information
• A bill of materials (or other data points will be key to accelerating your business)

The document is intended for all business and technical stakeholders—in keeping with the spirit of alignment across all teams. It’s not just a look back at what you’ve discussed—it’s an action plan for moving your business forward. Along with your AWS expert, it will help you tap into the AWS ecosystem to implement those moves, whether it’s launching a build, creating a funding path for testing, making a prototype, or kicking off internal upskilling.

We designed this program to be a transformative—but not time-intensive—commitment. It’s not a bootcamp or an accelerator program. You’ll just be spending a few hours meeting with your AWS expert, who will put in much more behind-the-scenes work on their end to uncover the data-driven solutions that will accelerate your business.

One participant in the recruitment industry told us, “We’re humbled that AWS invested so much time and energy to help us out.” They knew that AWS powers some of the world’s largest enterprises and that SMBs could trust us as well. But every one of those giants got their start somewhere—and they didn’t get where they are today without the help of dedicated partners.

Watch Theresa’s presentation about Gain Insights from AWS Smart Business Day 2022

Next steps

No matter what stage your business is at or where you plan to go, AWS is ready to be that dedicated partner to your team. By leveraging our global ecosystem and sharing our vast resources, we can have the privilege of powering the fresh, innovative businesses that will carry us into the future.

Ready to be one of the many businesses taking advantage of our roadmap program? Schedule your one-on-one consultation now.