Capitalizing on the Partner Foundation

Bejoy Antony, Director-Channels and Strategic Alliances, India and SAARC, Avaya

From the standpoint of go-to-market and technology direction, the launch of Avaya Flare Experience clearly reinforces that new Avaya is not just looking at enterprise telephony. In fact, we are looking at collaboration in a fuller blown context that drives us to make much more relevant to customers and partners in the collaboration space. Flare is just the beginning and we as an organization are evolving towards being more and more relevant to customers in collaboration space.
From the market perspective, I don't think a paradigm shift is going to happen but this will definitely make sure that we have the best solution for our ecosystem partners who are also bringing value to our collaboration business. The opportunity of video and collaboration is being looked at very seriously by Avaya. This will also bring an opportunity for the newer generation of partners in the collaboration space. We stay focused with our large partnerships including national distributors and conventional SIs. But this will definitely add more value to our customers and partners in terms of overall relevance.

What all opportunities will this bring to Avaya?
This announcement is very relevant in terms of closing in the business and bringing in the revenues. This new face of the technology that we have launched will make the stack of Avaya much more compelling beyond telephony and appliances. We are very strong in the unified communication in the contact center space and these recent launches are much more relevant to customers. We will achieve the goal of collaboration in the multi platform environment. The stack has become more compelling through which we are able to deliver value in terms of revenue and profitability.

Going forward, what would be Avaya's channel focus in the Indian market?
Clearly, we are going to consolidate our position and relationship with the channel partners in the country. You will see us consolidating and investing on the foundation that we have built in with our partners. Our multi-channel strategy is helping us go deep and wide in terms of coverage.
Right now, our focus is on top 8 to 10 cities plus Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. We have enough opportunities at these places to create for our partners as well as the customers. But, we will be eventually looking at expanding beyond these markets as well.

How many channel partners do you have in India? Do you have any channel programs in place? Also, incentive schemes for your channel partners?
We have signed up over 300 odd resellers and partners across the country, who are registered under the Avaya Connect program. We have four Platinum partners-Wipro Networks, Orange Business, IBM, and AGC Networks. Then we have mid-size partnerships to drive our business in India. We will work with these system integrators to drive our pitch to market place to our customers for the collaboration experience.
We are in the process of launching a Partner Recognition Program specifically talking around the partner employees, thus bringing along some kind of pull factor as far as partner employees are concerned. We do have incentive schemes based on quarterly basis. Since this is the first nine months of us going in for multi-channel strategy, we will be soon announcing many Partner Rebate Programs to emphasize and drive profitability of our partners.
In a leverage model like the way we are, partners are clearly driving the customer experience for Avaya. This means that partners are capable enough to draw the skill sets and resources, which they have imbibed by virtue of channel programs and deliver it in the form of capabilities and ensure customer experience.

NIVEDAN PRAKASH
(nivedanp@cybermedia.co.in)