AWS Strategic Collaboration Agreement Powers Crayon’s 3X Revenue Growth

By Amol Gavali, Senior Strategic Partnerships lead – AWS
By Milos Kitanovic, Global AWS Alliance Lead – Crayon Group AS

Since January 2023, Crayon, an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, transformed their business through the AWS Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA):

• Revenue Impact: 3X growth in AWS business
• Market Expansion: Three new revenue streams launched
• Global Scale: Unified AWS practice across 46 countries
• Customer Value: Improved enterprise delivery capabilities

Watch Crayon’s CEO and AWS leadership discuss SCA2.0 Transformation.

Strategic Collaboration Agreement Framework

AWS Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) drive enterprise transformation through structured execution with defined metrics and milestones. SCAs accelerate partner innovation and customer value creation through multi-year strategic commitments. Partners receive focused investment and support to drive revenue growth, expand market share, and build technical capabilities across Build-Market-Sell-Grow motions.

Signing an SCA launches the journey toward shared goals. However, global partners with distributed operations face a recurring execution challenge: converting strategic SCA goals into measurable actions across teams and geographies. As Amazon’s Jeff Bezos emphasizes: “Good intentions don’t work, mechanisms do.”

The ‘Define-Organize-Execute-Measure’ mechanism helps organizations: Convert SCA goals into measurable outcomes; Transform strategic objectives into actions; Deliver consistent results. This mechanism enables them to drive long-term strategy while creating immediate business value. This blog demonstrates how Crayon used this mechanism to navigate complexity, accelerate change, and drive transformational growth through the SCA.

Crayon’s SCA Transformation Journey

Business Impact

Measurable transformation results using the mechanism:

1. Revenue Growth
   • 3X increase in AWS revenue (2023-2024)
   • Three new revenue streams launched: AWS Distribution business; AWS Marketplace solutions; Generative AI services
2. Organizational Transformation
   • Dedicated AWS practice established
   • 46-country alignment achieved
   • Strengthened delivery capability
   • Restructured incentives for growth

Background

In 2020, Crayon SCA1.0 encountered five key challenges: COVID-19 business disruption, organizational misalignment across regions, limited Go-To-Market (GTM) capabilities, inefficient resource allocation, and SCA1.0 business case assumptions requiring market validation. Crayon and AWS collaborated to incorporate these lessons learned in SCA2.0. In 2023, Crayon changed its execution approach and adopted the ‘Define-Organize-Execute-Measure’ mechanism to deliver results.

Transformation Through Mechanism

Figure 1 shows the mechanism for a successful SCA execution along with its key components.

Figure 1 – SCA Success Mechanism

Define

Crayon and AWS built a shared dashboard defining key performance indicators (KPIs) across three core work-streams – build, market and sell. They appointed Single Threaded Owners (STOs) to lead each work-stream that formed the core team. An STO is an individual who owns an initiative (task, program, project, deliverable, function) and is single-threaded to that activity, meaning they have no other competing priorities and focus on their assigned initiative.

The core team created a custom input-output model linking SCA 2.0 goals (outputs) to specific activities (inputs) across each work-stream. They used leading and lagging indicators to track and identify execution challenges to proactively address them. This gave STOs the ability to tackle potential bottlenecks before they negatively affected business performance. For example, revenue targets mapped to specific inputs such as sales team training and enablement, field-ready kits, pipeline development, marketing plans, country-specific goals, and incentives. Using the input-output framework, teams execute detailed 30-60-90-day plans prioritizing high-impact activities. Weekly meetings and monthly reviews drove continuous and iterative refinements to planning and execution, while removing blockers for the core team.

With clear goals, metrics, and ownership established, Crayon realigned its organization to drive collaboration direction, accountability, and priorities.

Organize

Crayon restructured its organization and investments to speed up growth. To unite 46 independently operating countries, Crayon created a specialized central AWS core team. This team aligned country-level incentives and redesigned compensation models to drive consistent performance across regions. Country leaders committed to specific AWS business targets, creating clear accountability at each level and region.

This aligned structure and incentivization sped up execution across the three key motions – Build, Market and Sell.

Execute

• Build: Crayon created an Agile Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE), driving consistency through standardized offerings across global markets. Country-specific teams localized these offerings. Further, Crayon expanded AWS capabilities through targeted AWS training and certification programs – AWS Skill Builder.
• Market: The marketing team transformed lead tracking into comprehensive sales cycle analysis. Each marketing activity was tracked from first contact to closed deals, identifying the marketing activities that drive qualified leads resulting in revenue. This end-to-end analysis tracking conversion rates from lead to closed deal directed accurate marketing fund allocation to create full-funnel marketing kits resulting in increased lead generation.
• Sell: Crayon creates targeted strategies for three customer segments: New to cloud; New to AWS; AWS optimization candidates. The sales team implements a tiered country model, allocating investments by market potential and growth opportunities. Crayon bolstered sales capacity by hiring dedicated AWS Sales leads who partnered with country heads to drive pipeline and close opportunities.

The execution phase demands precise measurement and clear tracking to enable agile refinement of execution strategies, ensuring optimal performance and adaptability.

Measure

Crayon drives accountability and results through a tiered governance structure:

• Monthly KPI reviews track achievements and remove obstacles
• Quarterly, half-yearly, and annual business reviews guide data-driven decisions at leadership level to maintain the course or pivot

This approach provides clear visibility across the organization and sustains progress toward SCA goals.

The mechanism powers Crayon’s rapid strategy adaptation, market response, and performance tracking—creating sustainable, scalable and replicable success.

Leadership Perspective on Transformation

“Since signing our new Strategic Collaboration Agreement in April 2023, Crayon and AWS have created a successful co-sell collaboration that is part of the reason we see such incredible growth in both our organization and numbers. We are continuing to strengthen our relationship with deep collaborations and a commitment to provide what’s best for our customers.”
— Melissa Mulholland, Crayon Group CEO

“The transformation we have witnessed through our APN Programs and Strategic Collaboration with Crayon has been remarkable. Crayon’s journey demonstrates the impact of committed long-term collaboration and co-investment. Their sustained growth and customer centricity showcases how the right collaboration framework, combined with dedicated execution, can drive significant value for our customers in their cloud adoption journey.”
— Giuliano Serventi, AWS, Director, Partner Core

Best Practices for Strategic Collaboration

The Crayon transformation shows five key best practices that drive successful SCA execution outcomes:

1. Build Strong Foundations: Partners establish clear governance structures that define accountability at each level. They create dedicated teams led by Single Threaded Owners who focus on their assigned initiatives. These teams link incentives directly to specific business outcomes, while using input-output frameworks to measure results. The organizational structure aligns with collaboration goals to drive consistent execution.
2. Drive Strategic Alignment: Teams map strategic goals to specific actions and owners, creating clear lines of responsibility. They implement standardized processes with defined KPIs across regions, ensuring consistent execution frameworks. Work-stream activities connect directly to business outcomes through data-driven decision-making, enabling measurable progress tracking.
3. Execute with Precision: Partners drive consistent delivery through Centers of Excellence, which standardize best practices while enabling local adaptation. They deploy targeted go-to-market strategies based on market potential and customer needs. Teams build specialized capabilities in key areas, ensuring consistent performance across regions through standardized yet adaptable approaches.
4. Measure and Govern: Organizations track both leading and lagging indicators through tiered reviews conducted monthly, quarterly, and annually. This cadence enables teams to remove execution obstacles quickly and adapt strategies based on timely data. Clear and transparent performance visibility drives accountability at all levels.
5. Scale and Optimize: Teams scale proven practices across markets while adapting to local requirements. They continuously refine approaches based on market feedback and strengthen cross-functional collaboration. This creates a foundation for accelerated growth through proven mechanisms, building sustainable and repeatable processes.

Conclusion

Crayon’s transformation shows how the Define-Organize-Execute-Measure mechanism converts Strategic Collaboration Agreement goals into measurable business outcomes. Their journey from COVID-19 disruption to achieving 3X growth proves that success requires systematic execution. Through this mechanism, AWS partners can modernize their AWS practice, thus providing better customer value in widely distributed organizations. AWS partners seeking accelerated growth can learn more about AWS Partner Network programs and benefits via the website or by contacting their AWS representatives.

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Crayon-AWS Partner Spotlight

Headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Crayon is an AWS premier tier services partner. It has a global presence spanning 46 countries with 4,000 professionals. Starting as a software asset management company, Crayon has grown into a versatile consultancy, helping customers optimize software investments, embrace cloud and AI technologies, and drive innovation through cost efficiencies.

Contact Crayon | Partner Overview | AWS Marketplace | Crayon Website