It’s no secret that the pace of digital transformation has increased under the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the world see-saws between shut-downs and speed-ups, companies in every industry and sector are being forced to modernize to survive.

But, emerging safely and successfully into the post-COVID world is a task that requires help from the experts.

“The pandemic is a forcing function for companies to pause and think about everything from … infrastructure, to security, to where their data sits, to what insights and intelligence they’re getting from that data,” said Andy Tay (pictured, right), Accenture AWS Business Group lead and managing director at Accenture LLP. “And then, eventually, even to the talent they have in the organization, how they can be competitive [and] their culture of innovation of invention and reinvention.”

Tay and Brian Bohan (pictured, left), director and head of the Accenture AWS Business Group, spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the AWS Executive Summit. They discussed the relationship between Accenture and Amazon Web Services Inc. and how the Accenture AWS Business Group is guiding companies as they undertake digital transformation at speed. (* Disclosure below.)

Three keys to success: People, partners and culture

Today’s cloud adoption discussion centers around “help me figure out the business case and then pull together all the different pieces so I can move more quickly with less risk and achieve my business outcomes,” Bohan stated.

The key is to take companies from that place of “pause and think about it” to having real plans that can be implemented, according to Tay. There are three factors that Tay believes mark a successful end-to-end transformation strategy: People, culture and partnerships.

“It’s not just the leaders, but who you have in posts across the company working in a collaborative, shared success model,” he said, advising companies to hire “people who are not afraid to invent and fail.”

The mindset of “iteration and improvement versus seeking perfection” is also important for company culture, Tay added. As for partners, Tay predicts: “As we move forward over the next five years, we’re going to see an increasing number of players in the ecosystem … so it’s important for companies … to pick partners … who have all worked together and have built solutions together.”

Being part of a supportive ecosystem allows companies “to get speed to value quicker, it allows them to bring in preassembled solutions, and just drives that transformation in a quicker iterative manner,” Tay stated.

AABG combines AWS and Accenture expertise

The specific benefit of partnering with AABG is the speed that is so necessary today, according to Bohan. “When AWS and Accenture show up together as AABG, we are executing off a single blueprint with a single set of assets so we can move fast,” he said.

Accenture’s new Cloud First service marks the company’s commitment to helping businesses navigate their digital transformation safely and fast to take advantage not just of cloud, but the benefits it brings to leverage data to gain the insights that have become imperative for post-COVID success.

“We bring together preassembled industry offerings to help as an accelerant for our customers,” Tay stated. “Part of our Cloud First and our AABG strategy is to increase our touchpoints and our integrations and our solutions and our offerings with the ecosystem partners out there.”

Teaching clients to extend their definition to cloud to include hybrid cloud and the intelligent edge is also an important part of the strategy, according to Tay.

“All of that is highly relevant for AABG as we look to build those capabilities as industry solutions as we look to enable our customers, but also as we look to extend how we go to market,” he said.

What Cloud First signals is that “cloud really permeates everything that we’re doing now,” Bohan stated. “All aspects of the business will get infused with cloud in some way.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Executive Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Executive Summit. Neither Accenture LLP, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE