The combination of AVANT’s Vendor Engagement and Sales Engineering teams will support new and existing vendor strategies, technical empowerment, and opportunity development for the Trusted Advisor.
CHICAGO, May 30, 2024 – AVANT, a platform for IT decision-making and the nation’s premier Technology Services Distributor, has merged its Vendor Engagement and Sales Engineering (SE) groups to create its Technology Enablement team. This realigned organization will prioritize vendor strategy, technical training, partner engagement, and market expansion for the Trusted Advisor.
“The role of the Sales Engineer has evolved, and today, there is a much greater emphasis being placed by the engineering organization on better understanding where a vendor excels, from both a technical and customer experience standpoint,” said Shane McNamara, Executive Vice President of Engineering and Operations, AVANT. “As such, we have merged two departments within our organization that already had overlapping roles in engaging with vendors in our portfolio. By establishing the Technology Enablement organization, we are powering the evolution of key solution offerings and vendors’ channel programs, making 2024 the ‘year of the vendor.’”
Powerful Organizational Alignment and Data Accelerates Opportunity
In creating its Technology Enablement team, AVANT aims to strengthen the bond between its engineers and vendor engagement managers, vendors, and Trusted Advisors in order to generate opportunities and drive more seamless customer engagement.
“Our Sales Engineering team plays a vital role in vendor selection. From helping the Trusted Advisor and their client evaluate the technical feasibility of a given vendor’s product stack, to leveraging data collected by AVANT Analytics and available through Pathfinder, they are able to demonstrate exactly where vendors excel in terms of channel sales, technical support, customer engagement, and more,” says Drew Lydecker, Co-Founder and President, AVANT. “This, when combined with the capabilities of our vendor engagement organization, which assesses the legal and economic aspects of a potential partnership, ensures powerful alignment across both areas of the business. This is how we can effectively create more opportunities for our vendors and Trusted Advisors.”
In the newly established Technology Enablement organization, AVANT’s Practice Leads are responsible for managing their respective categories, such as UC/CX/AI or Security/Resilience, from end to end. This includes managing vendor relationships, developing and executing training content at events, providing engineering support to help Trusted Advisors close deals, and ultimately driving sales in their respective categories.
Furthermore, within this new structure, SEs will collaborate more closely with the vendor engagement team to collect real-time data on vendor partners, including observations from Trusted Advisors and end customers. This data will power AVANT Analytics to better inform recommendations and educate Trusted Advisors via Pathfinder. AVANT SEs will also actively participate in Strategic Business Reviews with vendors, providing feedback, suggested improvements, and product roadmap enhancements to better align with the needs of the end customer and Trusted Advisor.
“With these changes, AVANT plans to accelerate opportunity creation and increase participation so that the Trusted Advisory can ultimately increase their revenues,” added McNamara.
About AVANT
AVANT is a platform for IT decision-making and the nation’s premier distributor for next-generation technologies. AVANT provides unique value to its extensive network of Trusted Advisors with original research, channel sales assistance, training, and tools to guide decision-making around IT services that promote business growth. From complex cloud designs to global wide-area network deployments to the latest in security services, AVANT sets the industry standard in enabling its partners and clients to make intelligent, data-driven decisions about services, technology and cost-effective communications. For more information, visit www.goavant.net, or connect on Twitter and LinkedIn.