Avaya accelerates, strengthens channel strategy

Avaya Inc a global leader in corporate networking solutions and services, today announced it has embarked upon a strategy to further develop the channel to become the primary route to market for Avaya`s traditional contact centre, PBX, data and wireless networking solutions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Supporting this strategy it today announced a new BusinessPartner Programme that encompasses all major partner segments from resellers to global systems integrators. This enhanced multi-channel programme provides a single common framework incorporating new levels of accreditation and support.

The new strategy will enable the company to devote more resources to drive market and business opportunities with early adopters in the new high growth technology areas of customer relationship management (CRM), converged voice and data and unified communication.

"Over the last two years we have seen the channel mature in both its capability and quality of customer service. Sophisticated communications solutions, such as call centres, which were once the preserve of our direct sales force, are now supplied by the channel as a matter of routine," said Anil Srivastava, Vice President Channel Management, EMEA.

Avaya, which is committed to serving the enterprise voice and data communications market at large business and small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) level, will offer enhanced levels of support to its BusinessPartner network. It plans to increase the proportion of sales through its BusinessPartners in EMEA from about 50% today to about 70% by the end of fiscal 2002.

Key aspects of the new strategy include:

* Avaya to shift its active efforts to a focus on multi-national customers and large national accounts.

* In the past 12 months Avaya has successfully transitioned the majority of its accounts to its BusinessPartners and quadrupled the number of accredited gold and silver partners to 120 in the region. It has also established alliances with leading companies such as Siebel, IBM and Accenture.

* Increased marketing and managerial support for managing BusinessPartner relationships. Avaya to provide direct touch support to partners managing major opportunities and accounts.

* Simplification of the distribution channel for Avaya`s award-winning SME portfolio - centred on the Enterprise Class Internet Protocol Solutions (ECLIPS) portfolio - by establishing a select network of pan-EMEA distributors. This week Crane Telecommunications became Avaya`s first pan-EMEA `diamond` distributor.

Key aspects of the BusinessPartner Accreditation Programme:

* Existing accreditation framework expanded to cover resellers; value-added resellers; value-added distributors; global systems integrators and service providers.

* Accreditation based upon certification in three strategic practises: CRM; converged voice and data networks; unified communication.

* New levels of accreditation:
i) `platinum` level for value added resellers, augmenting gold and silver;
ii) new `diamond` and `premier` levels for qualifying distributors;
iii) new `platinum` and `gold` levels for alliance partners such as systems integrators.

* Framework engages and supports partners in the context of their own business objectives and core competencies and enables Avaya to foster collaboration between partners.

* End-customers have the means to assess objectively partner and vendor capabilities across all routes to market.

* Programme to expand certification of engineers to support Avaya solutions. The number of certified Avaya BusinessPartner engineers has doubled to over 500 in the past 12 months.

"We have in place a programme that will enable us to better support our partners and leverage fully their technical sales and support capabilities to grow revenues and provide our customers with enhanced levels of service," said Patrick Lelorieux, President of Avaya in EMEA. "Rapid movement to a largely indirect sales model will allow us to devote more resources and skills to address new software-based applications in the burgeoning areas of CRM, voice and data convergence, and unified communication. These solutions will be made available through our multi-channel partners and underline our commitment to developing the channel and serving our customers in the way that they want to be served."