Avaya and Jacada Forge Partnership

By Tracey E. Schelmetic

Editorial Director,
Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine

 

Unified desktop and process optimization solutions provider Jacada Ltd. (News - Alert) today announced it has signed a joint marketing agreement with Avaya. Under the terms of the agreement, Avaya Consulting and Systems Integration and Jacada will jointly market and deliver Jacada customer service solutions globally.

“Today’s contact center agents often must deal with a maze of business applications in order to access the critical information they need to deliver prompt and efficient service to customers,” said Ken Kaisen, vice president, consulting and systems integration, Avaya (News - Alert). “Jacada solutions tackle that problem head-on and provide an excellent complement to Avaya’s contact center professional services portfolio. Together we help businesses improve agent productivity, enhance customer service and realize a significant return on their contact center investment.”

The escalating number of applications used nowadays by call center agents means increased log-in time (having to enter user names and passwords multiple times, several times a day), increased training, inefficiency and a higher propensity for user errors. Jacada’s WorkSpace solution simplifies an agent’s desktop by providing a single, easy-to-use interface to the applications and contact center tools required to complete a customer interaction. Jacada WorkSpace is powered by Jacada Fusion, a process optimization platform that improves workflow across a company's existing business applications.



“Jacada is extremely excited to be affiliated with the global leader in the contact center industry,” said Paul O’Callaghan, president of Jacada. “Avaya is a trusted advisor to many of the companies in our target markets. Together we can offer a solution that delivers a major competitive advantage for our customers by significantly reducing operational costs and greatly enhancing the customer experience.”

I had a chance yesterday to speak with Brian Carmichael, global contact center practice lead, consulting and systems integration (CSI), for Avaya Global Services, and David Holmes, executive vice president of Global Marketing for Jacada.

“From Jacada’s perspective, this is a huge win for us,” Holmes said. “This agreement goes well and beyond the typical partner agreement. We are jointly marketing and delivering our contact center solutions. We're investing a lot on both sides to cross-train and promote the solutions to our joint target market. Avaya is opening a lot of doors we would not be able to otherwise open ourselves.”

Carmichael said, “My team has done a whole suite of traditional contact center consulting services. With so many applications running on the desktop, there is a lack of integration. We’re looking at this as a big opportunity to help grow our businesses and help our customers.”

When I asked Holmes how this partnership would be beneficial to Jacada, he replied, “From a go-to-market perspective, we have every reason to believe it's going to accelerate our path to the marketplace. We’ve been selling directly. There’s only so many customers you can address with a handful of sales and services people. This instantly expands the scope of our marketplace. We have huge expectations internally for what this is going to mean for our business.”

And the benefits to Avaya? Carmichael said, “I think this agreement will extend our [Avaya’s] capability and lead us to more service opportunities, helping customers drive costs out of their business and improve customer service. It also provides us with an advantage from a service perspective. Given how Workspace works, we can integrate other Avaya products into environments that may not have had the opportunity in the past.”

The two added that is a non-exclusive relationship on both sides, allowing both companies to partner elsewhere.

For more in-depth information, visit www.jacada.com and www.ayava.com.

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