 Hello and welcome to today's session of the 2021 AWS global public sector partner awards for the award for the best think big for small business partner. I'm your host, Natalie Erlich, and we are now joined by our very special guest, Lisa Brunet, managing partner and president of the DLZB group. Welcome to today's session. Now I'd love to talk with you about how you got to partner with AWS. Sure. Natalie, thank you so much for your time today. So we started a journey with AWS back in 2012. We ran into an AWS rep at another conference and he was talking about how he would love to do some innovative technology because one of my reps were actually wearing gold glass and he's like, I need something creative. I need something different because right now, AWS Amazon is just known for selling online books while the cloud is only known for storing photos. So we spent a little bit of time working with them and we came up with this idea of doing creating the test drive where people could actually go and try a different product like we actually did people soft on AWS. So we were able to approve that large ERP applications could run on the cloud and that was actually faster and more resilient than having it on premise. And from there, it's been a whirlwind journey with AWS. Yeah, terrific. Well, how does TBS be open doors for companies and help them understand all of the tools available to them through AWS as well as APN? With the Think Big for Small Business program, what it does, it gives us the opportunity to play with the big guys. So a lot of small businesses have the capabilities. They're very agile and they have the connections. They have the capabilities. But because of our size, we have limitations on getting the number of certifications, getting the number of competencies. So with this program, it evens the playing field for everybody. So now I'm able to, like I've been turned away projects because of my size because they're like, well, you're not certified by AWS at this level. But now I'm at the same level as some of the larger primes and I'm able to compete with them head to head now. So it has this kind of like democratizing effect? Yes, it does. Terrific. Well, do expand a bit more on how the Think Big program has helped us overcome other kind of obstacles? For us, a big obstacle was always with the competencies and the certifications. So before we were never eligible to get a competency, even though we were the ones that proved that PeopleSoft could run on the clouds. So we had the competency for Oracle applications. We had the competency for Microsoft, but we were never eligible to actually get the competency because we were not an advanced partner. And then also with the training, we were always being hindered because we couldn't get all the discounts available at a certain level for the training. So we had a pay full retail price. Now we get a discount. So I can send everybody for training to make sure that everybody's up to date on their certifications. And how do you assess your experience as an AWS partner? I love it. I love being an AWS partner. And that's I think what really makes a difference is the employees at AWS. They stand by us for everything. Of course, we do give a lot of benefits to them. But anytime I have a need, I have everybody's number. I can reach out to anybody on their team and say, I need assistance with this. I'm looking to try to accomplish this. And they'll do anything they can to help us. And do you have any advice for other companies who might be interested in moving in that direction as well? For any small business, I think the Think Big for Small Business Program is a great idea. Just as long as you're willing to put the hard work in and you can prove to AWS that you're willing to work hard, they'll reciprocate and work with you to create this great, to make you a great partner. And I'd love to hear more about your company, DL, ZP Group. Tell us about your core market. So we actually were split between three different main markets. We try to be equal between public sector, private sector, and federal. We are just starting a federal journey. We recently became eight A certified. So we're looking to expand in the federal journey. But for us, we try to make sure that we don't have too strong, we don't have more than like 33% of our income come from any one sector, just because if there's a crisis, like with the federal, when they shut down for six months, I don't want to have to lay off my employees. I value my employees too much to have to say, I'm sorry, I have to lay you off. So we made sure we're resilient and we're able to handle any customer at any given time. Well, let's talk about resilience. I mean, how do you ensure that you're resilient? Obviously, you've had some really tough time in the last year or so with the pandemic. I mean, what's your advice for companies that are looking to become even more resilient in the years ahead? For us, I think a big thing is we we've always worked hard to make sure that we offer a quality product for our customers. So that really helped us on the down times when everybody was struggling to keep their doors open, our customers survived us, because we we've have an improvement track record to make sure that we offer them the best solution where they're for them when they need us. So they they came to rely on us and they would use us what joined the past year during the pandemic. And if you could outline just in further detail your business model for our viewers. So we actually are 100% remote and we're I have the staff around the world. We purposely strategically like have everybody around the world because some of our customers are global. We have to offer 24 seven support for them, especially nowadays. But another part was because it's asked to recovery. I'm based in Houston, Texas. So we're known for getting hurricanes. That means sometimes I can be without power for three weeks. But I don't want that effect my customers. I don't want them to feel that they can't come to us knowing that if a hurricane comes through, I might none of my employees are going to be able to work. So we made sure that we have a great disaster recovery plan. We have where no matter what happens in man made or natural disaster, we're able to support our customers without any with any without a pause. And then we also make sure that all of our employees, they have a quality work like balance. And I think that also helps because that shows the clients that we value your employees. And it makes them want to work with us more because our employees are happy. They're happy to work with us because they know that we'll be. And describe to us in greater detail the core technology and its key benefits. Well, a lot we do is around AWS. So when we first started with them, as I mentioned, we started with them with the test drive and your applications. But then we expanded our services. We started working with serverless. When we first heard about serverless, we were like, this is a game changer. We can do almost anything on serverless and save save so much money. So we years ago, we went and built our website. So it's 100% serverless. So it costs us a couple pennies a month to run. Versus if you think about a traditional website, that's a couple hundred dollars a month to run. And then we started playing with machine learning. So we're now developing an internal project where we're using machine learning for a number of applications. And we're going to keep expanding where we're going to have a full suite of applications to give to our customers that will be run 100% serverless using machine learning. Yeah, really terrific. What are your goals for the next year? What is your vision for 2021? My goal is to do a little bit more in federal. We're actually expanding to Canada as well. So we have officially launched there. We have employees in Canada that are working in different areas in different provinces and with the federal government to try to help AWS grow there. Terrific. And I thought it was just so fascinating how you're mitigating a disaster and really pushing your business forward, thinking geographically. And that's something that we had to all figure out with the pandemic. So in a way, your business has been a bit a step ahead of the others. And what other ways are you trying to kind of be a step ahead of the curve from the competition? So we're looking to stay ahead of the curve by making sure we have the right resources in place. So we do a lot making sure that when we bring somebody on, we make sure that they're aware that this is a team based company. You're not going to be working individually on one project. We were very big on respect. So we're always making sure that no matter what level you come in, even if you're just an intern here for the summer, you're running a project, you're getting that real world experience. You're going to be happy. You're going to even have times where I'm reporting to you where you have to make sure I'm accountable for the work. And that helps us to build respect amongst the peers because they know what it takes to run a project and they're going to make sure that they do a good job because nobody wants to see their peers fail. Yeah, well, excellent insights. I agree with you. Lisa Brunet, managing partner and president of the DLZP group. That's all for this session. I'm your host, Natalie Orlick. Thank you so much for watching.