Since 1992, Nortel Networks has offered its enterprise distributors the chance to participate twice-yearly in the European Distributor Alliance Council forum to address strategic marketing issues, supply technical information updates and resolve operational and logistical issues.
Euro-DAC is a vital bridge for the community of Nortel Networks distributors to exchange ideas, share experiences and feed information back to the company`s management to ensure ongoing improvement of products and services.
The recent April 2002 event in Montreux, Switzerland, showed the ever-increasing participation of data equipment distributors, along with those in the voice service areas for which the forum was first established. Since 2000, the convergence of voice and data services has been a key focus for the Euro-DAC meetings with delegates from the EMEA regions.
More notably, SA is well represented with two people from local Nortel Networks partners on the sub-committee for New Product Information: Charlie Ward of Dimension Data and Hylton Tiedt of Grintek Telecom.
David Fraser, service account manager of Nortel Networks South Africa, explains the vital role the Euro-DAC meetings play.
"This forum has essential advantages for our channels," says Fraser. "It is a way of improving their businesses by sharing experiences and leading with one voice to gain product and service improvements from Nortel Networks.
"Issues and recommendations that are put forward by the Euro-DAC committee receive top priority with Nortel Networks in the company`s plans for the future."
Fraser points out that the work of the organisation continues even beyond the regular meetings.
"Sub-committees are formed to work on specific issues raised to the benefit of all concerned," he says. "Conference calls then keep the partners in touch with common issues and enable sharing of information to the benefit of all.
"This makes it easier to identify areas of common interest and concerns for the purpose of improving the product and service set - to the benefit of the end customer. New initiatives in developments and processes affecting the distributor channels can be presented and refined, with input received before being implemented.
"This allows Nortel Networks and its partners the ability to share ideas and problems in an open environment, such as the recent refinements which improve the key code verification process to make it more user-friendly.
"The Euro-DAC forum and the work of its sub-committees support the company to continue its effective track record of sales and service. Nortel Networks has the proven products to successfully deploy in the enterprise market space, whether campus LAN or WAN (local or wide area networks), voice and voice over IP (VOIP) services and continue its history of successful network deployments for all its customers."
Charlie Ward, Voice Technology Specialist of Dimension Data, also points to the positive results the forum achieves.
"Customer feedback is very important and Euro-DAC allows this to take place on a face-to-face level," says Ward. "Many product enhancements and upgrades originated from the Euro-DAC."
"This is one reason why Nortel is one of the leaders in the VOIP space, with future developments concentrating on this technology. Nortel is in a fortunate situation, having years of voice and data networking experience - and this is reflected in its products.
"Locally, Nortel is gaining market recognition and the company is also moving into other African markets - currently, it is rated as one of the largest voice and IP port supplier in the world and the fourth-largest voice ports supplier in Africa and Middle East."
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Nortel Networks is an industry leader and innovator focused on transforming how the world communicates and exchanges information. The company is supplying its service provider and enterprise customers with communications technology and infrastructure to enable value-added IP data, voice and multimedia services spanning metro and enterprise networks, wireless networks and optical long haul networks. As a global company, Nortel Networks does business in more than 150 countries. More information about Nortel Networks can be found on the Web at www.nortelnetworks.com.
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