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In this powerful episode, Vince Menzione sits down with Rebecca Jones of Bridge Partners and Mark Yaphe, Head of Consulting Partners for AWS, to uncover how AI is fundamentally rewiring the partner ecosystem. They explore the urgent shift from 90% stalled AI pilots to a new era of rapid execution, warning against the trap of “shiny object” syndrome. By unpacking the necessity of a “builder mindset” and a product-focused approach, this discussion reveals exactly what top-performing companies are doing to collapse six-month development cycles into four weeks and secure their place in the 2026 market landscape.
Key Takeaways
- The transition from on-prem to cloud and marketplace is now entirely focused on AI transformation.
- Top companies approach AI with a product mindset rather than running scattershot pilots.
- Empowering frontline teams with a “builder mindset” can collapse solution cycles from six months to four weeks.
- Partners must avoid the $260 billion AI “FOMO” trap by specializing in specific industries and workflows rather than trying to do everything.
- Evaluating the “highest and best use” of AI models like Claude is essential for managing token economics and ROI.
- Thriving through AI disruption requires cultivating a strong growth mindset and prioritizing human connection and critical thinking.
If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community.
At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.
Key Tags
AI transformation, AWS partner ecosystem, hyperscaler alignment, builder mindset, product mindset implementation, Bridge Partners insights, GenAI solution cycles, AI token economics, Claude model utilization, GSI strategy, 2026 ecosystem shift, AI ROI measurement, agentic tools, workflow specialization.
Transcript
Rebecca Jones and Mark Yaphe AUDIO EPISODE
[00:00:00] Rebecca Jones: You can either, um, think about being disrupted or being a disruptor.
[00:00:07] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us the way hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel. And what it means to win in 2026.
[00:00:18] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host.
[00:00:23] Vince Menzione: And each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of
[00:00:26] Vince Menzione: technology, partnerships and outcomes, the voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. It is the strategy because being in the room changes everything.
[00:00:45] Vince Menzione: Let’s start. We have another incredible session today, right? So I get to invite another friend of, of ultimate partner who’s been around for a while and, uh, it’s just absolutely amazing. Rebecca has been in the studio, she’s been at, how many of events have you been with? Fourth, fourth one, and I’m gonna have you introduce Mark as well.
[00:01:10] Vince Menzione: So come on, on stage. Rebecca. Rebecca Jones to many of you know.
[00:01:14] Rebecca Jones: Thank you, sir.
[00:01:15] Vince Menzione: Good to see you. Good to see you. And Mark, great, great to have you. I want to have you, Richard, we’ll have you, Rebecca’s gonna introduce you and then we want you to introduce yourself as well, sir.
[00:01:23] Rebecca Jones: Wonderful. Well,
[00:01:24] Vince Menzione: and another AWS exec.
[00:01:26] Vince Menzione: I love this. Like, I know. Yeah, we’re finishing out the day Strong.
[00:01:28] Rebecca Jones: Well, Vince, I have to say, you’ve got me, um, the last time we got together, it was the last session before happy hour. So I guess we’re closing.
[00:01:36] Vince Menzione: Well, you know, we’re gonna close us
[00:01:38] Rebecca Jones: out
[00:01:38] Vince Menzione: really nicely. Know we, yeah. We’re serving Bloody Mary’s, by the way, while you’re guys are up here.
[00:01:42] Vince Menzione: No. Good.
[00:01:42] Rebecca Jones: So, um, we’re so excited to have Mark. Thank you, mark, for joining us here. Um, head of consulting partners for AWS and, uh. We’re gonna close this down, aren’t we? I love
[00:01:54] Vince Menzione: it. I love it. Yes. I’m looking forward to it.
[00:01:56] Rebecca Jones: Okay.
[00:01:56] Vince Menzione: So Mark’s well, welcome. Good to have you.
[00:01:58] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Do you wanna take a seat?
[00:02:00] Vince Menzione: Uh, yeah,
[00:02:00] Rebecca Jones: please do.
[00:02:01] Rebecca Jones: All right.
[00:02:01] Vince Menzione: Please do. I’m morphing the pillows up, by the way.
[00:02:05] Rebecca Jones: Oh, are you
[00:02:05] Vince Menzione: by the way, for those of who don’t know, these got shipped from my house because we got Oh, I was wondering. It’s hard to find, but yeah. Yeah, they’re, we take them from event to event. It’s so funny to have them. But I wanna, well, thank you for both being here.
[00:02:17] Rebecca Jones: Yes.
[00:02:18] Vince Menzione: I think it’d probably be helpful for those who don’t know, bridge Of course. Maybe just spend a moment because I know you well.
[00:02:23] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:02:23] Vince Menzione: And we know the organization well, those of us. Those of us.
[00:02:26] Rebecca Jones: But for me, uh, so let me talk to you a little bit about Bridge Partners and my role, um, the company has been around for almost two decades.
[00:02:34] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. And so when you think about the transformation that’s happened within the tech industry. And our primary focus is the tech industry. Uh, and within that we focus on enterprise companies and we help them with product go to market and how they scale that through partners. Yeah. Uh, so that’s given us a really interesting and, uh, vantage point around the transformations from on-prem to cloud, cloud to marketplace and now marketplace and the transformation with ai.
[00:03:04] Vince Menzione: I feel like you’re the McKenzie of the, of the partner business. Like I,
[00:03:07] Rebecca Jones: I like that.
[00:03:08] Vince Menzione: Can we get that?
[00:03:09] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:03:10] Vince Menzione: I’ll, I’ll, I’ll sign an agreement with you, but I really do, I feel like as we work together, bridge was always like the organization we bring in to help us. Solve the big issues. Yeah. Like that I think about your organization.
[00:03:20] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And Mark, talk to me about Global Consulting services. Sure. So is it all GSIs? Is it,
[00:03:24] Mark Yaphe: uh, so I head up, uh, global Consulting Partner Marketing. Okay. So I focus really on, on two key categories for the, the more sig larger, uh, GSIs. Uh, I’ve got a team that actually partners very closely with them. Nice.
[00:03:36] Mark Yaphe: That helps them develop the right strategies, go to market approaches, nice to unlock the opportunity. And then for the full consulting community, I look at those mechanisms. Go to market approach is leveraging marketplace to help our whole consulting community become successful with AWS.
[00:03:51] Vince Menzione: And we’ve got GSIs in the room here, which is kind of cool actually.
[00:03:53] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Um, where do we wanna start? Let’s, let’s,
[00:03:57] Rebecca Jones: well, yeah, we’ve got a good list of questions to go through. How’s everybody feeling? We’re we’re good? We’re awake. One more session, everyone. Alright. Okay.
[00:04:09] Vince Menzione: So Rebecca, uh, across the organizations you work with. What are you seeing from the highest ’cause? I, I say you’re like the McKinsey.
[00:04:16] Vince Menzione: What are you seeing from the highest performing companies? Yeah, that they do differently. When it comes to turning your go-to market strategy into outcomes?
[00:04:23] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Um, I will say the most important thing that we’re seeing from companies is they’re asking different questions, fundamentally different questions when it comes to ai.
[00:04:34] Rebecca Jones: Interesting.
[00:04:34] Vince Menzione: What do you mean by that?
[00:04:35] Rebecca Jones: Well, we, we talked a lot this morning about there’s never been higher access, and I’ll say general adoption for tools and technology. There was a great stat this morning. Uh, I think Jay shared that, uh, from MIT.
[00:04:50] Vince Menzione: We keep looking there as if he’s still
[00:04:51] Rebecca Jones: sitting there.
[00:04:51] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, I’m looking. Where was Jay? He, he was all over the place. Um, there was a great stat from MIT that there was, you know, if you looked at last year, 90% of pilots. Were stuck and they weren’t going anywhere. And now that’s dropped down to 70%. So there’s movement and transformation. And so when I think about that, and when I go back to the types of questions leaders are asking, um, that are really moving ahead, they’re looking at operating systems differently and they’re looking at, um.
[00:05:25] Rebecca Jones: They’re asking the questions on where should I apply AI within those work streams, um, and within those operating systems, and the way in which they’re approaching that is with a product mindset. So that is fundamentally different than just the scattershot of let’s just do pilots everywhere.
[00:05:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. You’ve talked about product, uh, mindset with me as well.
[00:05:48] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:05:48] Vince Menzione: And I think we were gonna talk about builder mindset as well, mark, that that is a kind of a different point of view. When you think about moving from strategy to execution, how does that mindset show up inside teams and organizations?
[00:06:00] Mark Yaphe: No, absolutely. Yeah. You know, the notion of the builder mindset is about, uh, taking the notion of innovation and pushing it out to the edge.
[00:06:07] Mark Yaphe: Of the organization, um, the greatest ideas for innovation, the greatest things that will help you scale. They’re in the minds of your customers and the people that can best understand them and best address ’em. They’re your teams. Yeah. Your, your customer teams or your technical teams, but unlocking it. You, you want these teams to do more than just have the conversations and understand needs.
[00:06:28] Mark Yaphe: You want them to be tooled and equipped to build. Yeah. So the ones that are right in front of the customers. In that moment of need where they say, I’ve got these offerings and these motions, and it gets me this far, but if I could only do a little bit more, I could delight them. I could really power this up.
[00:06:45] Mark Yaphe: And so you wanna unlock that. You want to give them the tools to build, to build the POC to address specific, uh, options in the meeting. And then when they’re showing some success, show the rest of the organization how they can scale that.
[00:06:58] Vince Menzione: How do you think about, because I think about big GSIs. Having huge organizations like Accenture has half a million people, and then you have customer teams that may not, are, may not be as fluent in the technology side of things.
[00:07:13] Vince Menzione: Like how do you make sure that’s getting from the customer all the way to the right people in the organization and driving that loaded question. I know.
[00:07:20] Mark Yaphe: No, I, I, um, you, you, you want to think about how that process works. Yeah. And there are parts of the organization. That define how do we get go to market offers in motions out to the field.
[00:07:34] Mark Yaphe: Um, and they look at the whole thing and they say, well, how effective are we and how quickly can we cycle through? Yes. These activities. There’s one partner I worked with, um, they looked at this and they measure the cycle time. How long does it take me to get from pushing on an offer? Working with customers, getting feedback, and then creating new updates.
[00:07:53] Mark Yaphe: A long, long time ago, like two years ago, this would take, it was a hundred
[00:07:57] Vince Menzione: years ago in AI terms.
[00:07:59] Mark Yaphe: Well, that’s basically it. This took about five to six months. They get about two revs a year. Now. They literally implemented a geni solution that number one uses geni to push it out to the teams, makes it bespoke on an engagement by engagement basis.
[00:08:14] Mark Yaphe: It makes it relevant for their industries and their use cases. And that same tool is the feedback mechanism. So in real time it’s providing feedback. So they’ve collapsed six month cycle times to four weeks. And the punchline here is we talked about builder teams. The people that figured out they needed the solution, built the solution, and piloted the solutions were the builder teams.
[00:08:36] Mark Yaphe: They were the people working with the customers.
[00:08:38] Vince Menzione: I love it. Yeah, I love it. Anything to add to that? Rebecca, I know you work again, being the McKinsey of the, of the partner world.
[00:08:46] Rebecca Jones: Well, I’ll, I
[00:08:47] Mark Yaphe: It’s gonna stick,
[00:08:47] Rebecca Jones: stick. It’s
[00:08:48] Vince Menzione: gonna
[00:08:49] Rebecca Jones: stick. You say it three times, that’s stick. No, I, you know, mark just hit on some really important things with the customer mind.
[00:08:57] Rebecca Jones: You’re really looking at what outcomes are you trying to drive for those customers and that builder mindset, you, you’re going to hear a lot about that because companies need, as you transform, you really need to be thinking differently. And transformation takes quite a while. And while there is massive opportunity and you see the, the quickness you have to have that long-term vision and then be able to work backwards from that.
[00:09:21] Rebecca Jones: And so I couldn’t agree more with the, the focus on customer outcomes.
[00:09:26] Vince Menzione: So we’re in a very interesting, I’ll call it, almost a seminal point, although that’s overused in terms of where we are with AI today, right? I you mentioned like two years, feels like 10 years. Yeah. Ago, right? I mean, we’ve seen such transformation happening, but it also doesn’t feel like organizations are keeping, like, I, I feel like small SMBs actually are further ahead because they, they have to be agile, but the bigger organizations are still trying to figure some things out, right?
[00:09:53] Vince Menzione: So. What needs to change around organizations, culture management processes? Like how do we bring, how do we bring everyone along on this journey?
[00:10:04] Mark Yaphe: There’s a lot that needs to happen. Um,
[00:10:07] Vince Menzione: yeah.
[00:10:08] Mark Yaphe: One thing that struck, there’s a lot of things I, I wanted to anchor on. One that Yeah, please. It could be a relevant conversation.
[00:10:13] Mark Yaphe: Both, um, as part of your, uh, partner organizations delivering outcomes to customers. And, um, it’s about focusing on the business outcomes. It can be very easy, uh, to talk about the technology and the services, but day to day, the sales organization is going into solve customer problems. They’re meeting line of business leaders in specific industries who have very specific business problems to tackle.
[00:10:42] Mark Yaphe: And I think one thing that organizations can do is impress upon them that it’s critical to understand. What are the business problems that we solve for our customers that we’re serving? What are those use cases? What are the drivers for it? In the role that I’m doing in an organization, how does that move the needle?
[00:10:58] Guest: Yeah.
[00:10:58] Mark Yaphe: For the business outcomes, it’s, it’s not dissimilar to other things, and perhaps it’s a little bit of a pivot, but always thinking about business outcomes, I think is, um, a little bit of a change that needs to be instilled within
[00:11:10] Vince Menzione: what, what are the best doing better, and where are you seeing the gaps?
[00:11:16] Mark Yaphe: Couple of areas, uh, one area, um, nobody knows everything. Yeah. Nobody’s got all the knowledge.
[00:11:23] Vince Menzione: Right.
[00:11:23] Mark Yaphe: And so rely on your ecosystem of partners and stakeholders. Yeah. Recognize you’ll only have so much information, um, and reach out, whether it’s to your technology partners, your business partners, your hyperscalers AWS to find out what am I missing.
[00:11:38] Guest: Yeah.
[00:11:38] Mark Yaphe: Um, again, many years, you know, a hundred years ago, two years, two years ago, um. We’d have these conversations about, well, what use cases are you seeing and what business problems are you solving? But, but those would be in scheduled meetings quarterly. Now there are agenda items on weekly standards.
[00:11:55] Mark Yaphe: They’re happening every single week. What are you seeing? What are you seeing? And further, I’ve seen some gen AI and agent solutions that actually automate how that information flows to, to make it, to accelerate.
[00:12:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it’s, it’s absolutely amazing. Yeah. Anything on, I mean, certainly you’ve got a perspective ’cause you’re working with these organizations.
[00:12:13] Rebecca Jones: I have a couple thoughts on this specifically for the partner organizations and the partner companies here. I can understand there’s a lot of, you know, we looked at a stat earlier about the AI partner opportunity and it was. $260 billion somewhere in that bracket. And that can create maybe some fomo, you know, maybe, uh, let’s go after everything in this area.
[00:12:37] Rebecca Jones: Yes. And not pick and choose
[00:12:39] Mark Yaphe: a
[00:12:39] Rebecca Jones: shiny object. Shiny object and not prioritize. And it’s actually the opposite. It’s really understanding where your strengths are in the market. Um, who’s in your partner ecosystem? What are you bringing to market? Are you, uh, a tech company that are looking to break? Bridge and bring out services or your services company, and now that can build product.
[00:13:01] Rebecca Jones: But really understanding your opportunity. What industry do you play, what specialization do you have? And go really deep and then know how to augment your partners and the ecosystem around you to make you stronger and better for the customer. So with that market opportunity, which is. Tremendous, how do you focus and prioritize?
[00:13:21] Rebecca Jones: And that’s where I have observed partners. Oh, I’m a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit here. And, and, uh, I would be curious, I mean, that’s probably pretty hard for you if a partner shows up and they’re a little bit of everything.
[00:13:34] Mark Yaphe: Well, I, I resonated with a point that you made before. Yeah. I, I’ve spent, um, half my time at AWS on the consulting side working with enterprise customers, the us half the partners.
[00:13:43] Mark Yaphe: It’s critical that partners understand what’s unique about them.
[00:13:45] Exactly.
[00:13:46] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:13:47] Mark Yaphe: You it. I mean, everybody here, they’re looking at cloud migrations and modernizations and agentic, but that’s kind of part of the noise. You’ve gotta know what uniquely you do in an organization to deliver value. Are you developing supply chain for transportation companies or drug acceleration pipelines for.
[00:14:06] Mark Yaphe: Pharmaceuticals. Yeah. Starting with that anchoring on your differences, I think is, is really important.
[00:14:11] Vince Menzione: When I first started in the partner world, that was one of the biggest challenges and dilemmas, and I’m sure you still see it today, where I do all things. You know the partner that does the big SI that does everything, they have all the certifications.
[00:14:24] Vince Menzione: I have 10,000 people trained on every technology certification, right. And then like, well what do you do? Like, and they can’t clarify. Right. Have that conversation.
[00:14:33] Mark Yaphe: And then how do people, customers,
[00:14:35] Vince Menzione: yeah.
[00:14:35] Mark Yaphe: Or sales organizations choose you and why.
[00:14:38] Vince Menzione: Yes, exactly. Exactly. So how do you get them to show up in that way?
[00:14:43] Vince Menzione: Like especially if they’re like, how do you coach them through that? ’cause it feels like it’s still exists, right? This like mentality or this mindset. I can do all things, especially with the shiny objects that we’re facing today.
[00:14:55] Rebecca Jones: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:55] Vince Menzione: And I feel like we’re almost, I, I almost feel like we’re at a point right now where we were getting clearer and we’ve had so many shiny objects, even just in the last few months.
[00:15:03] Vince Menzione: Like you were talking about how like months feels like ears, uh, you know, I’ll, I’ll use the Claude example here. Yeah. ’cause we, a lot of us pivoted and shifted and like, what do I do now as a partner in the room? Again, I think you, you mentioned the solving for business outcomes for client outcomes as opposed to chasing the next shiny object.
[00:15:24] Vince Menzione: Like how do you get, how do you coach them on that?
[00:15:27] Mark Yaphe: It’s always on the agenda. It’s, it’s day one conversations. Yeah. Who are you? What’s unique about you? How do you deliver value? Which customers do you focus on and with? Which use cases, and if it is a jack of all trades. Then my team, my and my team will help ’em.
[00:15:42] Mark Yaphe: We know that down to specific areas of focus.
[00:15:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So how do partners need to evolve their capabilities? Like how do they, I mean, how do they actually hone in on this? Like, you know, okay, I can state one thing, but how do I hone in on my capabilities, offerings and teams to stay relevant during this time?
[00:15:59] Mark Yaphe: Um, what I’m coaching them on right now? Yeah. That’s what I is, uh, use the technology internally. The agentic tools and the gen AI tools are. I’ve been at this for a while, and the tools that exist right now dramatically expand your capability and capacity. So the thing I coach ’em is embed them in your organization.
[00:16:18] Mark Yaphe: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Tackle those key things organizationally. You need to change and leverage these tools to help you accelerate.
[00:16:23] Vince Menzione: And they’ll help you solve, they’ll help you solve for absolutely any of them. Right. It’s like, it’s like hiring a consulting organization to come in and solve for that.
[00:16:29] Mark Yaphe: Yeah.
[00:16:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. How are you thinking through this?
[00:16:31] Rebecca Jones: Well, uh, there’s a couple things I’m thinking about. Um, if you start to. I’ll stay with the customer for just a minute because you’re talking about Claude and just the dramatic improvement.
[00:16:45] Guest: Yeah,
[00:16:46] Rebecca Jones: that’s there. Just with Claude, uh, we start to think about highest and best use of the model because, uh, we had another talk earlier about the economic conditions and the.
[00:16:58] Rebecca Jones: And so now we’re asking partners like, right,
[00:17:01] Vince Menzione: the tokens.
[00:17:01] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Yep. How do you specialize and be focused by industry, by workflow, by use cases, you’re gonna start to look at what is the ROI of that investment? Is this a good enough? Look at the models, look at how you’re using that, and you’re having a token conversation because the economics might not be there.
[00:17:21] Rebecca Jones: And so as you’re a business and a customer looking to transform their organization. They’re going to look across the business and figure out what are the highest and best use cases that should get that focus. And as a partner, if you wanna be in that conversation and really helping that company or that.
[00:17:40] Rebecca Jones: Customer transform from where they are. It’s not only industry specialization, but it’s functional and workflow and really helping them understand what they should be using in that particular use case. So specialization is king or queen and that, um, scenario, and that’s where, you know, you ask partners today to specialize because there’s a whole economic conversation coming behind that, around how do you think about the models as that new one shows up?
[00:18:09] Vince Menzione: Let’s shift from the technical side to the human side.
[00:18:12] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:18:13] Vince Menzione: Super important, right? I mean, we were having this conversation internally, like everybody’s saying, you know, jobs are going away, jobs are going away. I think I, I believe more jobs are gonna happen, but we’ve gotta get humans aligned properly to what their new roles will be.
[00:18:29] Vince Menzione: Comments on this one?
[00:18:31] Mark Yaphe: I think this is like a classic organizational transformation Yeah. Question. Mm-hmm. Where the 70, 80% of the problems are people process change. Um, I, I think there are these three areas that organizations need to focus on, and I’m gonna sound a little bit repetitive, but one, it’s okay.
[00:18:46] Mark Yaphe: It’s, uh, the role of the team members have gotta be focused on outcomes, especially when things are moving quickly and there’s ambiguity. The one way that you can anchor on moving in the right direction is how do I let my customer, so one is outcomes. The second one is the builder mindset. Move from, I’m presenting, I’m hearing, but I’m gonna build things.
[00:19:05] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:19:05] Mark Yaphe: And the last one is, uh, inspiring your team, making them competent and confident to navigate ambiguity because that is the premise upon which everybody’s operating. So those three,
[00:19:17] Vince Menzione: Rebecca, what capabilities. Would be embodied in, in that organization that Mark describes.
[00:19:23] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, I think that the growth mindset, you know, if you can package that around, you can either, um, think about being disrupted or being a disruptor.
[00:19:34] Rebecca Jones: And if you have a growth mindset around the opportunity that’s ahead, it’s a whole different perspective of the challenges before you. I love that. And so when I think about what. Capabilities. You know, it’s the critical thinking and the judgment, human connection. We’re all here for a reason. Yes. Right?
[00:19:50] Rebecca Jones: Yes, yes. And so as a leader, um, really helping set that tone and letting them see the art of the possible, um, around that vision. But it’s really, if I boiled it down to one thing, it’s having a growth mindset to the opportunity ahead.
[00:20:05] Vince Menzione: Well, I wanna open it up. We have about five minutes left. Yeah. And this has been so insightful, but I.
[00:20:11] Vince Menzione: I mean, I feel the energy. There’s gotta be some questions out here too. ’cause this, we have two incredible experts up here talking. I mean, and this is such an impactful conversation today. So John’s got a mic and uh, I think we’ve got some questions coming.
[00:20:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:20:33] Rebecca Jones: this’s
[00:20:33] Vince Menzione: a long way
[00:20:33] Rebecca Jones: around.
[00:20:34] Vince Menzione: Took a
[00:20:34] Guest: thanks, long David Younger with. Thank you. That was great, great discussion. So, uh, you, you brought up a key statistic, uh, which is the MIT data and around the, the 90, I think it was 95%. Of, uh, businesses, uh, are not in production. And, and actually they, they went further to say that 95% of businesses.
[00:20:56] Guest: Uh, we’re achieving zero ROI. And, and that was about a year ago, right? And now, and now you said the number, I think the number was quoted earlier today too, is, is shifting to about 70% of those, uh, projects in production. I’m curious to, to know as you, and I think you nailed it too, when you talk about product, right, have a product mindset or business mindset, right?
[00:21:16] Guest: Not just how can I save money, but how can I actually generate revenue, whether it’s saving money or generating revenue. Where would you say. Uh, what, what percentage of companies you talk to are actually achieving real ROI would you say?
[00:21:31] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. Really. Great. So I’ll go back and explain a little bit more about what I mean by product mindset.
[00:21:39] Rebecca Jones: So a lot of companies did get stuck or there were just, uh, a. Large amount of pilots happening in the organization. And that’s not a bad thing. ’cause you think about, that’s a builder mindset, go and test and trial. But when you’re starting to look at true business transformation, you really need to think about where that, um, high value use case is.
[00:22:00] Rebecca Jones: So a. The product mindset I’m talking about is taking a long-term view of the outcomes you’re trying to achieve and how are you going to measure those? And then look at that workflow, that function, and if you’re an expert in that function, whether that be a sales process or a marketing process, you know what KPIs your business is trying to drive today, and you start to unpack that.
[00:22:24] Rebecca Jones: And so we’ve seen and what. Um, the most, uh, accelerated motion is knowing the KPIs and the measures you’re trying to achieve and then working towards that. And from there you can build, right? And you start to think and you have an ecosystem approach to that workflow or work stream. So we have seen, um, everybody wants cost on the system.
[00:22:46] Rebecca Jones: Um, we have seen dramatic cost reduction in areas we’ve seen, you know. Two to three times, um, faster time to market. Um, there’s multiple things that we’ve seen as, uh, leaders really start to unpack that, understand what they’re trying to accomplish in the business, and I’m happy to go into greater detail.
[00:23:06] Rebecca Jones: I know we have just a couple minutes left, but that’s just the product mindset up. How do you get started and how do you look at that long-term opportunity?
[00:23:15] Vince Menzione: Really great answer. Mark, do you wanna add that?
[00:23:17] Mark Yaphe: I think if you look at all use cases. Maybe 30% perform. But if you look at this across enterprise, I think each enterprise is finding very specific use cases where they’re driving ROI and and um, and so I think it’s about picking your spots, knowing who you are, identifying the top priority ones, not worrying about the broad enterprise transformation.
[00:23:38] Mark Yaphe: Find those areas where you can drive value a little bit. Yeah,
[00:23:41] Vince Menzione: that’s great that that’s almost a mic drop moment in my opinion. Yeah. That’s really great. Any other questions? I we’re holding every, oh, we got one in the back. I was gonna say I’m holding people up from happy hour. Yeah,
[00:23:53] Rebecca Jones: just, we’ll just bring the cocktails in here
[00:23:56] Vince Menzione: pretty soon.
[00:23:57] Guest: Uh, Jeremy with Integral, um, um, a money question, something comparable. Uh, activator portfolio, the programs for founder firms that are trying to really get off the ground with new ideas. And there’s some comparable programs, I think with different providers. How much of that is a strategy, and I don’t wanna put you on the spot if activating portfolio aren’t the things you’re covering, but, but that money investment for startups that are trying to grow and really focus on AWS uh, the thousand dollars is the founder version that gets us in and then a hundred thousand dollars.
[00:24:26] Guest: It’s a bit difficult to get into. And then there’s bigger ones after that if we attend the schools and all these things. But I’m thinking about as we all are trying to grow and really focus in AWS, which a lot of folks really wanna do with Bedrock and all the things that are kind of cool going on, it’s just.
[00:24:40] Guest: Great AI focused conversation, but how is that playing into attracting more of the MSPs that are, that are trying to grow and more of the startups to really funding this idea of, of startup mentality. Hopefully that’s not too off topic, but your, your fair game
[00:24:57] Mark Yaphe: was, was the question, how does funding.
[00:25:01] Mark Yaphe: Attract startups in specific categories, process.
[00:25:04] Guest: I think it’s, it’s about if there’s, uh, the other hyperscalers also have programs comparable. So Microsoft’s program is, uh, 150 grand to to, to build out the founder kind of, and it’s fairly easy to get into. Aw. WS is a bit harder to get into, but is that going to change as far as using that as a, as a key strategy for incubating more and more ideas to accelerate the velocity of everything you guys were talking about?
[00:25:25] Mark Yaphe: I’m really not the right person. Definitely outta my wheelhouse on that. No problem.
[00:25:31] Guest: Yeah.
[00:25:37] Vince Menzione: And we’re about seven seconds away from uh, happy hour.
[00:25:41] Rebecca Jones: I know,
[00:25:41] Vince Menzione: I know. This was fantastic. I know. It was so great.
[00:25:44] Rebecca Jones: Yes.
[00:25:45] Vince Menzione: And I think the McKenzie thing is gonna stick. I think it is, it is.
[00:25:48] Rebecca Jones: Now, mark, I’m gonna make
[00:25:49] Vince Menzione: sure it does. And Mark, it was great to have you up on stage with us today. So, so great to have AWS supporting us and sponsoring the event with us and, uh, and having just this broad audience of people just so interested in.
[00:26:02] Vince Menzione: Being in the room and and learning from each of you. So thank you so much today. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.
[00:26:09] Mark Yaphe: Thanks for listening to The Ultimate Partner
[00:26:11] Vince Menzione: Podcast. If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the ultimate partner.com.
[00:26:22] Vince Menzione: For show notes related content and the resources for this episode. And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live Event in Reston, Virginia, October 26th through October 28th. Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything.
