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AWS signs first A/NZ strategic agreement with Local Measure

Expands on a partnership that begun in 2020.
Jonathan Barouch (Local Measure)

Jonathan Barouch (Local Measure)

Local Measure has signed a three-year strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS), making it the first technology partner of the cloud giant within Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) to do so.

Expanding on a partnership that began in 2020, the new agreement provides a range of benefits for both parties. On Local Measure's side, the SCA will see the independent software vendor (ISV) expand into North America, France, Germany, the UK and Ireland in addition to A/NZ.

It is also set to accelerate the development of its contact centre platform Engage, a solution that builds on AWS’ Amazon Connect service.

“We're going to look to make our services feel more native,” said Local Measure CEO and founder Jonathan Barouch. “We're collaborating closely with the product and services team, figuring out what the real deep customer problem is and how can we attack it together to get the best customer outcome.”

Barouch also claimed the SCA is expected to have a flow-through effect on its reseller partners to receive “more coverage” due to Local Measure's current hiring attempts to build up more scale and support.

On AWS' side, Local Measure will set up a global Amazon Connect centre of excellence to train over 30 employees on Connect, provide AWS certifications and to set up Connect teams in countries where the ISV operates.

Additionally, both companies will increase investment in go-to-market activities across Local Measure’s targeted expansion countries, as well as collaborating together on sales and marketing initiatives to increase awareness of Engage

Local Measure and AWS will also collaborate on several sales and marketing initiatives to drive awareness for Engage, including workshops, webinars and customer technical support.

Barouch also said the ISV’s relationship prior to the SCA has been profitable for both parties, with Local Measure generating 500 per cent year-on-year growth last year; for every $1 spent on the ISV's software, the CEO claimed $5 to $10 is spent on Amazon Connect.

“A partnership has to be bidirectional; [there] has to be something in it for AWS [and there] has to be something in it for the partner,” he said.

This is not planned to be just a one-off occurrence either, with Barouch adding that the SCA is likely to factor into Local Measure’s plans to repeat that level of growth for the next three years.

To maintain that level of growth, Local Measure is likely to tap into its pipeline, which the CEO said has been diversified on a global scale.

“This agreement is like, 'How do we continue to get the rungs on the board that we're getting?' To give you a sense, I would say probably a year ago, I would guess roughly 75 per cent of our pipeline was APJ [Asia Pacific and Japan]. Now it's probably 25 per cent,” he said.

“That's been the shift that's happened through working with AWS. Now, our American pipeline dwarfs anywhere in the rest of the world. Why do we want AWS support? Because obviously, they're just so well ingrained in those markets and so mature.”

Local Measure's SCA with the cloud giant comes a month after it achieved AWS' Retail Competency status

Sasha Karen travelled to AWS re:Invent as a guest of AWS.