The Advantage Advantage. Why we are Different.

Most organizations have tightly defined if not always explicitly thought-out relationships with their product and service providers. It’s often easier to proceed from a mental model of when to call upon specific providers to meet specific needs. As you consider your value to your customers, what do you do when the value you can offer is far greater than the box that was first checked?

The business environment in which most of us operate is characterized by rapid changes, making it a necessity that each business grows and evolves in order to endure. It’s true for you, and it’s true for us.

Advantage Communications started out in 2001 and looked mostly like a telecom master agent, back when master agents were defined as distributors providing products, services, and support around telecom carrier offerings. That still describes some of what we do, but it no longer defines who we are and all we do.

Advantage is a strategic enabler of digital businesses.

In order to make a business more digital, companies must leverage digital products and business models requiring greater technology utilization. It’s rare that a company has all the technology capabilities and capacity to advance to the desired future state. Organizations will increasingly rely on external service providers to not only perform basic tasks but also to deploy the latest advances quickly. As the breadth and complexity of IT-based services and models increase, companies in all industries will supplement their in-house capabilities. IT sourcing becomes strategic. In a digital, virtual world, strategic partnerships with providers that supply critical knowledge and expertise are required to deliver the greatest value to your customers.

Advantage is already a virtual extension of your technology capability and capacity. Our commitment to you includes:

• Staying aware of latest developments and trends. This includes a deep understanding of industry changes, innovations, and market forces that shape the possibilities you pursue. We are able to quickly identify trends from the experiences of over 700 clients and the performance of over 150 providers. Understanding those trends is an essential input to your selection of provider partners and the best pricing they can offer. The pace of change in telecommunications and IT keeps accelerating… we are the best partner to help you not merely keep up but make decisions that improve your business.
• Advantage’s client portal allows you to see all your technology assets. It’s hard enough today, but as you add more providers’ products and services into your value chain, managing all the pieces – including those that are virtual resources provided by others – keeps getting harder. Our client portal gives you visibility into seeing all the assets you use in one repository. For those pieces which Advantage did not help you procure, you can upload the details to assemble the complete picture. You can drill down into all details of procured products and services to see what they’re actually costing you, call upon Advantage to intervene in performance issues, and monitor how expenses compare to the baseline and your plan.
• We’re committed to mutual success. A McKinsey study reported that win/win partnerships result in greater value created from technology plans and spend when the parties work in close collaboration and partnership. Advantage facilitates the interaction among you and your providers to achieve the best results, both operationally and strategically. We work with you to develop a roadmap of how you get to where you want to be. And yes, when our clients and providers win, we win too, allowing us to continue to find more ways to make our service more valuable to those we serve.
• Unparalleled value. Our services come with no out-of-pocket expense to you when you name us as your sourcing partner. All we do in strategy, sourcing, implementation, ongoing support, and client portal are all included in our offering. And we can discuss alternative frameworks where you keep sourcing in-house.

We strengthen your business agility via partnerships with your service partners in a number of ways:

• We start every engagement with a focus on the business and not just on technology
• We work for rapid recognition of benefits while keeping a view of the long-term impact of plans and relationships
• We collaborate with you and your providers on architectural issues that enable current and future success, not just optimizing spend for your current approach
• We are relentless in not only sourcing but in making services happen, with robust measurement to align all participants
• We focus on best fit in bringing providers to compete for your business, so you can be confident that the selection you make is based on future as well as current needs and overall value more than unit prices

In coming posts, we’ll address in greater detail these and other ways we enable digital businesses.