With a shared vision for excellence, IT and telecom industry leaders AVANT and PlanetOne are coming together as one company under the AVANT brand. More details are disclosed in this video.
AVANT co-founder and CEO Ian Kieninger said, “The acquisition of PlanetOne is an instant multiplier for the people, partners and providers working with and for AVANT and PlanetOne.”
PlanetOne’s founder and former CEO Ted Schuman added, “The synergies gained from merging the sales excellence and technical talent of AVANT with the back-office, operational efficiencies and partner enablement energy of PlanetOne were undeniable – it was the right deal at the right time and for the right reasons.”
Schuman becomes AVANT’s new Customer eXperience Officer (CXO), where he will be focused on enhancing the AVANT experience for the Trusted Advisor community, provider community and internal AVANT team. He also is tasked with finding new and better ways to achieve mutual success at scale by making it easier for channel partners to engage and do business with AVANT and AVANT’s ecosystem of providers.
The acquisition was announced by Kieninger and Schuman this morning from the PlanetOne offices. Schuman toasted the partnership, “This is history in the making! Cheers to combining the industry’s best into a single business-building powerhouse for our partners and providers — let’s go!”
Kieninger noted, “Our two companies have always shared a mutual respect and healthy obsession for excellence and the employee and partner experience. Putting our work hard, play hard teams together under the AVANT brand and further innovating around our intelligent tech platforms — Pathfinder and SENTIENT — will bring unmatched business value to our Trusted Advisors and clearly set AVANT and our partners apart in the market. Our team has always been incredible and now we are unstoppable.”
Last year, AVANT announced a strategic growth investment from Pamlico Capital to drive further expansion and scale of its business. The purchase of PlanetOne, adoption of its proprietary platform, SENTIENT, and integration of the PlanetOne team — including Hall of Fame luminary, and one of the original pioneers of the agency business model, Schuman, and 2022 Channel Influencer of the Year, Chris Werpy — shows the importance and long-term vision of the acquisition.
With presence in the United States and the United Kingdom, AVANT is leading the rapid acceleration and growth of the emerging technology market. Powered by Pathfinder, a platform for IT decision making and its World Class Engineering and Customer Support teams with consistently 90-plus NPS scores, AVANT’s Trusted Advisors have accelerated year-over-year growth in sales by 165 percent with CCaaS, 44 percent with cloud and data centers and an amazing 185 percent growth in security, while outpacing in UCaaS sales in the same years.
AVANT is known for its channel sales enablement with its highly acclaimed Special Forces Summits and Bootcamps and more than 1,000 certified Trusted Advisors in the first 12 months of its new Trusted Advisor Academy.
In 2021, PlanetOne eclipsed all previous years in sales and income records, as well as new partner recruitment and share with existing partners and providers. Taking its sales and back-office support to new levels, PlanetOne invested in and introduced SENTIENT, a disruptive, AI-powered, intelligent enterprise-grade sales engagement and partner enablement platform.
Additionally, PlanetOne’s provider portfolio also increased by 60 percent across key technology categories including advanced security, unified collaboration and voice, contact center, connectivity, cloud and mobility.
“We are pumped to have Ted, Werpy and the entire PlanetOne team join AVANT and share in the explosive growth opportunity that lies ahead for us, our Trusted Advisors and our providers,” Kieninger concluded. “The role of the Trusted Advisor has never been more important, and our top priority is to help them navigate the landscape, identify more opportunities and win big now and in the future.”
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