Why Use PATHFINDER?

We know that these days our customers often have a good idea about the type of solution they are looking for when they get in contact with potential suppliers for the first time.

The supplier VOLUME CHALLENGE

In a world of constant change, there are many providers in the market and new technologies and solutions are emerging all the time. Sorting out the wheat from the chaff is both time consuming in terms of conducting your research but helpful and necessary in defining your requirements.

THE SALES PERSON QUALITY CHALLENGE

Engaging with sales people is an essential part of the selection process and there’s nothing wrong with working with high calibre sales people. The ones you want to work with have got lots of experience and put your requirements at the top of their list.

The main issue is that the vendors usually only have one product or service in their kitbag, at which point the person you engage with may well have a conflict of interest in discovering their solution does not meet your requirements. The best sales people will focus on your requirements and qualify out very early on if they can’t do what you are looking for but this takes a lot of your time. It also involves speaking with an experienced sales person who realises it’s better to understand your requirements early in the process.

TIME IS MONEY AND A VERY PRECIOUS THING!

So, the question is “how much time are you going to have to spend when you are about to make business critical, strategic decisions on solutions that will potentially transform your business?”

If you multiply the long list of potential vendors by the number of live projects you are considering over the next 12-18 months, that’s a lot of time and effort on your part!

THE ANSWER IS TO USE PATHFINDER

For all the above challenges you will be facing when you start your next major IT project, we’ve turned this standard approach to vendor selection on its head and we’ve done all the hard work for you! Welcome to our platform - Pathfinder!

  • Our technology starts with your requirements, never the products, and we quickly remove the ones that don’t do exactly what you are looking for.

  • We offer solutions from a range of 400+ suppliers with over 2,000+ products in the different areas we work in.

  • There are no initial sales conversations to have, no websites or product literature for you to weed through, as we’ve done all the heavy lifting for you! It’s in the vendors’ interests to give us their technical features and keep them up to date, and we use those in a visual display so you can quickly see which products match, or not!

  • We are agnostic to the vendors we work with, all we care about is meeting your requirements and saving you the time and effort!

  • We can even help you write your RFI/RFP if you want, thus saving you the time and effort!

  • Our technical experts are available to you as part of your engagement with us and are requirements focused. They are all experts in their individual fields and not employed by any of the suppliers. It’s their job to give you the real world view of what it’s like to work with our vendors and how they’ve conducted themselves on other projects we’ve delivered to our existing customers.

  • Only when you have agreed your shortlist of the vendors that meet your detailed requirements, do we register your interest with them.

better inputs equals better outputs

  • You’ll get better engagements by working with Pathfinder first as the suppliers will already know what you want when you speak with them and it will only be the ones that can solve those things.

  • They will also know you have a live project coming up and that they are on the shortlist for it, so no one’s time is being wasted!

  • We can’t always promise this but you will usually get a more competitive price too.

  • Why? With Pathfinder being the starting point, they will also know you will be speaking with other suppliers who also meet your requirements.

  • We are happy to sit in on your follow up meetings, if you want us to, and help with each stage of the selection and implementation process. Alternatively, you can work with the shortlisted suppliers directly if you prefer.

It’s a bit like working with those comparison sites we all know and use to get the best deal for our energy, etc. The difference with Pathfinder is that we offer this service for business critical technology!

areas we cover in Pathfinder:

  • Customer Experience AI (CX AI)

  • Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

  • Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS)

  • Security

  • Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

  • Connectivity

  • Cloud

  • Co-location

  • Wireless

If you’ve got a project coming up in any of these areas, why not run your next technology selection process through Pathfinder?