ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
What does Avaya’s cloud transition mean for your
channel strategy and channel partners?
It definitely means a transition in the value proposition of our
partners. Traditionally, in the CapEx world, the value proposition
of a partner is to have the capabilities to sell, install and support a
certain solution.
In the cloud, it is pre-installed and pre-managed, so the value
proposition of the partner is really on the customer success front.
It’s making sure that the customer chooses the right cloud
application and functionality integration and uses it properly to
achieve the objective they want.
It is an important evolution for our partner value proposition,
where they need to shift their skills to focus on things like integration,
customisation and linking the business process to the technology,
rather than the previous focus on the technology and how to install
and support it.
That is becoming less and less important because, in the cloud, the
technology is installed once and used many times. But you definitely
need to work with the customer to use it properly, integrate it within
their business processes or customise it to integrate it with their
Our mission was
to make sure,
whatever it takes,
that Business
Continuity plans
were executed for
our customers
business applications. And this is what our
partner value proposition is evolving towards.
Tell us about #AvayaCares and
how Avaya’s VADs stepped up
during COVID-19 to help businesses
benefit from the Avaya Spaces and
Avaya CC offers?
That was another aspect of our historical
focus on Business Continuity. Being a UC and
contact centre application vendor, these are
both very mission-critical applications.
Business Continuity was always part
of our plan and in our discussions with
partners. When COVID hit, we just activated
those protocols. We worked with all partners
and customers to make sure they could
continue operating, whether their employees
were connecting remotely or not, so that’s
why we enabled offers to get licences
for free, to ensure they could continue to
operate as quickly as possible.
Whether they are contact centre
agents – the load on the contact centre
was tremendous for most organisations –
whether a healthcare or service provider
or travel such as an airline with people
stranded, we all suffered from not being able
to reach the agents easily in contact centres.
Our mission was to make sure, whatever
it takes, that Business Continuity plans were
executed for our customers – and we made
it available for them. We had great success
in the sense that thousands of agents, in
a period of two weeks, were able to work
wherever they were.
We are now continuing to work with all
those customers with the support of our
partners to see what the final long term
plans are in all this – how many will really
come back and how many will continue
working in that manner.
And what other applications can be
introduced as part of the contact centre to
help cater and handle the extra workload
now coming their way, which is going to
continue for a period of time because of the
repercussions of COVID-19. •
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