Avant Celebrates 10th Anniversary at Annual Special Forces Event, Unveils New App Initiative

By T.C. Doyle

AVANT SPECIAL FORCES SUMMIT — The Avant Communications BattleApp that helps channel partners provide smarter tech solutions to customers is getting a new name and expanded mission, according to the Chicago-based technology enablement company.

Avant’s BattleApp is now “Pathfinder,” which is likely to become an information and knowledge platform going forward. Here’s what the master agent is saying for now.

Pathfinder provides Avant an opportunity to achieve several objectives. For starters, it will improve the knowledge and capability of channel partners serving customers today. It will also provide partners an opportunity to sell new services to customers based on the data, insights and findings that Avant amasses and produces.

Avant’s Drew Lydecker

Avant co-founder and president Drew Lydecker tells Channel Partners that the level of insights his company will provide to partners and customers alike will rival, if not surpass, anything provided by the likes of Gartner or Forrester Research today. That’s because these two entities, as well as other traditional research houses, lack the actionable, internally generated sales data that Avant does every day, Lydecker says.

“Partners and customers alike have always wished they had a magic ball that would help them better select technology, understand innovation options and business outcomes that result from investments,” says Lydecker. “For the first time in history, we now have tools, analytics and numbers on what works and what doesn’t. And we present all this and more in Pathfinder, which we believe is one of the most disruptive tools in the industry.”

Specifically, Avant has expanded Pathfinder to include the following, according to the company:

Avant made its announcement at the 10^th Avant Special Forces Summit, which is underway this week in Chicago. On hand are more than 900 attendees from the world of telecommunications, cloud computing, security and more.

Avant has bestowed a variety of partner-of-the-year awards on several companies including CDW and Subsidium Technologies.

In addition, Lydecker made the case that the industry is at an inflection point, backed by new research produced by the company.

According to the company’s 2019 “State of Disruption Study,” trusted advisers are used by 82% of enterprise customers today. Of those that work with third-party trusted advisers, more than twice as many consider themselves to be leaders in digital transformation as those who do not work with third-party IT consultants.

“I’ll say it again. I truly believe we are living in the golden age of the trusted adviser,” says Lydecker.