DALLAS — As vendors retreat from implementation services, sales and service partners are teaming up to help businesses bring technology projects across the finish line.
Avant Communications is encouraging the trend. The technology services distributor launched an initiative to match technology advisors with professional services partners Tuesday at its annual Special Forces Summit. Initially, the program will focus on the implementation of Zoom products before expanding into the rest of Avant’s customer experience portfolio and its other technologies. Avant established a list of vetted and vendor-certified pro services firms that TAs can call upon to support customers in deploying CX solutions. The TSD will ensure that the paired services firms don’t encroach on TA customer accounts.
Avant Global Head of Engineering and Education Strategy Andrew Pryfogle said the goal is to remove friction between partners and speed up deals.
“We have vetted a set of professional services partners that meet certain criteria, agree to rules of engagement and have really rock solid vendor agreements with Avant that provide the protections to the trusted advisor that their customer relationship is going to be protected forever,” Pryfogle told Channel Dive.
CX vendors have leaned on partners to provide services for their products. Zoom channel leaders have been particularly outspoken about the strategic pivot.
“At our core, we make really, really great software solutions that can help transform businesses for our customers, and at the end of the day we want to focus on that as our core competency,” Zoom Chief Sales and Growth Officer Graeme Geddes said onstage at the summit. “My goal isn't to scale up a professional services org that can span the globe for every customer of every size.”
TAs have long been partnering with third-party firms to deploy what they’ve sold, but those relationships were often fraught with distrust. Many service firms have developed their own TA practices, and some of them have solicited customers a TA brought them in to help.
“I know a handful of really strong partners in our community whose trust has been broken by different types of engagements where another partner went in there and didn't do the right thing,” Datamob SVP Kristy Thomas said.
Bad experiences created trust issues across the TA community, Pryfogle said.
“TAs that have been trying to solve this problem literally had to do deals on the side, some of it on paper, some of it kind of a handshake and trust-me kind of thing,” Pryfogle said. “It's never been comfortable for TAs.”
Professional services partners will operate as suppliers in Avant’s ecosystem, billing end users for services rendered and paying the TA a commission that Avant takes a small piece of.
“That's a very familiar way of how money flows for our TAs,” Pryfogle said. “It's exactly how their business has been built, and we've melded this program directly to what they're used to.”
Professional services are more than just racking and stacking products, TechChoicePresident and Founder Paul Storella said. They also involve consulting that extends into the application layer of a company.
“If we're talking about CX AI, you're getting deeper into people's stack, getting deeper into people's business, and you need to make things work together,” Storella said.
A good professional services partner will help TAs deliver the KPIs that vendors have promised for their platforms. The relationship enables TechChoice and other TAs to deliver services vendors expect.
“There's other things out there like renewal, bill audits, tickets and customer management, that have to fall on us, and I think companies like Zoom at a very ground level are calling that out, saying, ‘You’ve got to do this, or I'm going to stop paying you,’ or ‘If you don't do this, I'm paying you less over time,’” Storella said. “When you look at it from a just a clear cut business perspective, they're paying us for lead generation and customer onboarding.”
Avant is encouraging its TA partners to develop stickier customer relationships at a time when IT leaders can use AI to vet vendors. The best TAs know how to offer true business context to purchasers that LLMs lack.
“[Customers] don't need another product thrown at them; they've already got hundreds,” Avant Cofounder and President Drew Lydecker said in his keynote speech. “They've gotten targeted for every which way. You've got a CFO staring at costs, you've got a CISO thinking about risk, and you have a CEO saying, ‘Just somebody tell me what the hell to do,’ and you're sitting in the middle of all of it.”
