AWS Marketplace enables independent software vendors (ISVs), data providers, and consulting partners to sell software, services, and data to millions of AWS customers. Working in partnership with the AWS Partner Network (APN), AWS Marketplace helps ISVs and partners build, market and sell their AWS offerings by providing crucial business, technical, and marketing support.
The AWS Marketplace Seller Insights team helps AWS sellers scale their businesses by providing reports, data feeds, and insights. We share this data directly with sellers through the AWS Marketplace Management Portal (AMMP). In 2013, we launched the first version of reporting insights, delivered monthly via static CSV files. To improve the customer experience, the next iteration of reporting upgrades was launched in 2020 and provided more granular data, refreshed daily and delivered via feeds.
We’ve spent the past few months working closely with the QuickSight team and are excited to now offer AWS Marketplace sellers public preview access to two new Amazon QuickSight dashboards. QuickSight improves the reporting experience for AWS Marketplace sellers by making it easy for users to monitor key metrics, perform ad hoc analysis, and quickly get business insights from data at any time and on any device.
In this post, we discuss our decision to implement QuickSight Embedded, as well as some of the benefits to AWS Marketplace sellers.
Data agility is a key differentiator
Making informed decisions is a business-critical function for successful organizations. Being able to quickly view performance trends and adjust strategies accordingly can make all the difference between hitting or missing business goals. Investing time, effort, and resources in technical data integrations, or creating pivot tables and charts from downloaded raw data, means a slower response rate to analyze shifts in performance trends. The more agile we can be in providing fast, efficient access to key performance indicators, the better positioned AWS Marketplace sellers can be to take action based on what their data tells them.
After reviewing customer feedback on their reporting experience, several trends emerged in what would be most helpful to them. First, sellers wanted a visual representation of their data. Second, though some wanted data feeds available to integrate AWS Marketplace data into their own business intelligence tools, others wanted to be able to access and review data without needing to invest technical business intelligence bandwidth in integrating feeds to create more user-friendly reports. Finally, they wanted the ability to easily filter the data, as well as the option to download it. In researching options to provide the reporting experience AWS Marketplace sellers wanted, we found that QuickSight was a perfect fit.
Doing more with data
Billed Revenue and the Collections & Disbursements are two new QuickSight dashboards embedded directly into the AWS Marketplace Management Portal (AMMP), accessed via the Insights tab. These dashboards—pre-built with 10+ controls or filters, 15+ visualizations, and powered by daily refreshed data—provide a visual reporting experience for revenue recognition and disbursements tracking.
The following screenshot shows what the dashboards look like in the Finance operations section on the Insights tab within the AMMP.
The dashboards are divided into several sections:
- Controls provides filters to refine your dashboard data.
- Date Range Filter provides the ability to filter dashboard data based on the dates.
- Metrics, Trends, and Breakdowns all provide detailed analytics to understand business performance.
- Granular data provides the option to download the raw data from the dashboard by clicking on the table and choosing the Export to CSV option.
For quick help, sellers can select the Info button to view the side navigation panel with tips on how to use the dashboard. They can also reach out to our team by selecting Contact us from the Info panel.
Improving the customer experience
The Billed Revenue dashboard now reflects changes within 24 hours of a customer being billed or refunded—a major improvement over the 45 days it once took to access this data from the legacy AMMP Billed Revenue report. Similarly, the Collections & Disbursements dashboard provides disbursement information within 24 hours of AWS sending funds to sellers, whereas it used to take up to 4 days from the legacy AMMP Disbursement Report.
Our team’s decision to go with QuickSight was the direct result of a clear alignment between what our sellers told us they wanted and what QuickSight offered. With QuickSight Embedded dashboards, AWS Marketplace sellers now have a visual representation of their data that doesn’t require time or resources dedicated to technical integration implementations, and they can quickly and easily manipulate the data via filters, or they can download it to a CSV if that’s their preference. Embedded dashboards simplify the viewing, analyzing, and tracking of key business metrics and trends related to financial operations. Being able to easily show each seller only their relevant data (using row-level security) provides us with the flexibility we need, with the peace of mind of knowing everything is secure. AWS Marketplace data is hosted in an Amazon Redshift cluster; QuickSight’s seamless integration into Amazon Redshift made it a fantastic choice.
Data-driven decisions with QuickSight
Embedding these new QuickSight dashboards into the AMMP has enabled us to provide at-a-glance metrics to AWS Marketplace sellers in a faster, more efficient, and far more user-friendly way than ever before. QuickSight has made a significant impact on how quickly sellers can access their data, which helps them respond faster to shifting trends.
To learn more about how you can embed customized data visuals, interactive dashboards, and natural language querying into any application, visit Amazon QuickSight Embedded.
About the Authors
Snigdha Sahi is a Senior Product Manager (Technical) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. She has diverse work experience across product management, product development and management consulting. A technology enthusiast, she loves brainstorming and building products that are intuitive and easy to use. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, solving Sudoku and listening to music.
Vincent Larchet is a Principal Software Development Engineer on the AWS Marketplace team based in Vancouver, BC. Outside of work, he is a passionate wood worker and DIYer.
