2019 was a remarkable year and incredible end of a decade for AVANT and our Trusted Advisor community! We celebrated our 10th year of business supporting the channel – in the best way possible! We launched new segments of the business, launched new brands to support Trusted Advisor promotion to their customers, and continued to grow at an incredible pace. Thank you to all of our trusted advisors and provider partners that helped make this our most exciting year yet – we look forward to an even bigger and better 2020! Here is a recap of our top 11 initiatives:
- 10 Year Anniversary: AVANT Celebrated our 10 year anniversary in style with 1,000 of our closest partners and friends at the Special Forces Summit and our 10 year Black Tie Gala in Chicago
- Special Forces Summit: We had our second annual Special Forces Summit with 1,000 people trained and enabled, and had the privilege of hosting an incredible special guest and keynote speaker, Robert O’Neil, of Seal Team 6, and author of “The Operator – Firing the Shots that Killed Osama Bin Laden and My Years as a Seal Team Warrior”.
- AVANT Analytics and Research: We launched our AVANT analytics and research and hired our very own dedicated analyst! Introducing Ken Presti, former IDC analyst. We published the first ever State of Disruption report, surveying 300 CIOs and measuring the rate of change for the fastest growing IT solutions. We also produced our first ever 6-12 report on SD-WAN, which covers predictions on where the market is heading in the next 6-12 months, based on real time data AVANT collects with our IQAs and Pathfinder App. Look for our 6-12 Security report to be published later this month! And don’t miss Ken’s podcast for more information. Search for AVANT Technology Insights on your favorite podcast platform on Apple, Spotify or Google Play. AVANT Analytics Announcement.
- Introducing the new Pathfinder! We rebranded our app, formally known as the BattleApp, to Pathfinder! Find out why. This rebrand came with amazing new features that will change the way you interact with your customers. This include: Quick quoting tool that provides instant pricing on internet connectivity, our “Ninja notes” – a searchable database of our sales engineering notes about key vendor solutions, data center overlay tools to highlight information such as latency to data centers, location of earthquake zones, electrical utility pricing and more.
- Launch of Trusted Advisor Brand & new Trusted Advisor centric website. The Trusted Advisor™ trademarked logo, available for use by all AVANT partners, represents the depth of industry knowledge that exists within AVANT people and platforms, and the thousands of resources we have access to within our provider ecosystems. An AVANT powered Trusted Advisor is ready to help enterprises stay ahead of the innovation curve in this fast-changing IT world.
- Bootcamps: AVANT trained 1,000’s of people in regional bootcamps around the US in cities like Huntington Beach, CA, New York City, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, and more! Be sure to check out our upcoming Bootcamps this year, and all of the rest of the events going on across the country!
- AVANT hosted two major events across the pond. We launched and sold out our first ever Special Forces Summit Europe London with 200+ attendees. Title Sponsor at first ever Channel Partners Evolution Europe.
- We Grew… a lot! AVANT hired 32 people to help support the growth of our trusted advisors, in areas such as finance, sales engineering, marketing, pricing analyst and research. We’re always looking to further enhance the best thing about AVANT – our people.
- Created more than 900 custom branded videos for our trusted advisors to send to their customers! Including videos on SD-WAN, DaaS, UCaaS, CCaaS, the Pathfinder and more. Check them out on our youtube page: AVANT Youtube channel
- Dallas HQ2: We broke ground in Dallas at our brand new, state of the art HQ2 with 100 of our trusted advisors and providers! Our office will officially open its doors for business this month. And don’t miss our Grand Opening on Feb 27th!
- Launched Pinnacle Membership – new sales achievement membership. As a Pinnacle member, our top performing trusted advisors will receive many benefits and perks throughout the year.
Thank you to all of our Trusted Advisors and Providers for your support and partnership. You are the reason we love doing what we do, and we are looking forward to continued success together in 2020!