Background
At a consulting organization where I worked, there was considerable churn at the partnership management level, which unfortunately resulted in the expiration of several key hyperscaler partnerships including Azure and AWS.
Eventually, a new operational model was defined to prioritize partnership efforts, and to distribute accountability across several key SMEs. At that time, I learned that the offerings identified earlier that year for our Google partnership were no longer valid, and preliminary offerings for AWS didn’t have supporting collateral and lacked formal executive support.
What I did
To correct this, I conducted detailed account research across our primary accounts, identified applicable offerings, and created a final “master” partnership map for additional consideration:
Step #1: Understand Account-level Transformation Needs
To help identify sellable solution offerings for the Google & AWS partnerships, I first conducted detailed account research across our priority accounts using Claude which did an excellent job at providing detailed intel.
Step #2: Map Accounts to Candidate Offerings
Next, I mapped each account to 7 standard offerings:
- Healthcare Data Platform Modernization
- Healthcare AI Operations Automation
- Healthcare Interoperability & FHIR Platform
- Healthcare Digital Member Experience
- Healthcare AI Contact Center
- AI Data Readiness Assessment
- Healthcare Cloud Security & Compliance
Step #3: Identify Top 3 Solution Offerings
Third, I chose the 3 most applicable offerings given our target accounts:
- Healthcare Data Platform Modernization
- Healthcare AI Operations Automation
- Healthcare Interoperability & FHIR Platform
Step #4: Build Master Partnership Map
Lastly, I created a “master” partnership spreadsheet mapping each account to its transformation trigger, solution offering, and partnership funding path.
With this master partnership map in place, I articulated a few key next steps for the team:
Task #1: Develop the Offerings
Our offering packages must be informative, yet lightweight, and each offering will need to highlight specific hyperscaler capabilities & strategies. Thus, an interoperability offering for Google will require some customization when applied to alternative cloud hyperscalers such as Azure. Once an offering has been defined, it can be included in Google & AWS partner and marketing portals as appropriate.
Task #2: Activate the Solution Offering
With the offering defined, the team will need to identify 3 target accounts for each hyperscaler (e.g., Google & AWS), a clear understanding of the funding path (defined in the master partnership mapping) and deal size.
While the master account map and supporting account-level research provides considerable intel as to where the first co-sell opportunities might reside, a final identification will require additional analysis and internal discussion.
Task #3: Define the Activation Timeline and Identify SME Contributors\
Defining an appropriate timeline for solution realization will help ensure that sales team members have what they need to be successful, and encourage discussions around account-level transformation needs, corresponding solution offerings, and hyperscaler capabilities.
What I discovered
Shortly going through this exercise and sharing my analysis, I observed that existing hyperscaler partnership activities at the company were primarily pipeline driven, and not offering-driven. Thus, I articulated two possible options to move forward in an executive briefing:
Option A: Formalize Priority Offerings
- Requires contributions from additional SMEs to tailor existing offerings per hyperscaler.
- Aligns key offerings to the priority accounts
Option B: Continue with Demand-driven approach
- Defer creating tailored offerings until a revenue-generating opportunity requires it.
- Partnerships remain sales-led.
Conclusion
While I did not remain long enough to see the full execution of this approach, the outcome of this work was a structured co-sell model which linked priority accounts, defined offerings, and hyperscaler funding paths.
If implemented, this would shift the conversation from opportunistic partnerships to a more deliberate, offering-led approach that could be further operationalized.