Is Avaya Connect Good Fortune or Brilliant Foresight?

By: Erik Linask (News - Alert)

When word came that Nortel’s enterprise unit would be bought by Avaya, one of questions that quickly arose was how Avaya would handle bringing the Nortel installed base and channel partners under its instantly broadened wings, especially considering that Avaya (News - Alert) has never had a global channel program.

Let’s take a step back in time to June 2008, when Avaya announced Jeremy Butt would head up its worldwide channels – or at least the many independent regional channel programs Avaya had in place at the time. Not coincidentally, at about the same time, Avaya began work on a complete overhaul of its channel effort to create a single, streamlined global program designed to drive more business through the channel and make it easier for partners to do business with Avaya.

The result of that overhaul of both strategy and infrastructure is the new Avaya Connect program, which, as Barat Dickman, director of worldwide channels at Avaya, tells me, “is the next step in our evolution to embrace the channel and actualize our high-touch, channel-centric strategy, transforming us to become channel-centric in every way we do business and drive a significantly greater portion of our business through the channel.”

The process of bringing a large existing customer and partner base into a new program won’t be an easy one to manage. But, the simplification and continuity injected into Avaya Connect will make it significantly easier to accomplish than with Avaya’s old channel model and will make its partners more productive and make it easier for them to be the face of Avaya for their customers. If it all goes as Dickman explains, Avaya Connect will be a three-way winning proposition for Avaya, its partners, and its user base.

Avaya had received significant feedback from its partners around the globe, indicating that its existing channel strategy made it difficult to work effectively with the company – the pricing structures were inconsistent and complicated, training took too long and was too expensive, and generally, there wasn’t a consistent system across the board, etc.

All of the issues raised by its partners have been addressed in Avaya Connect. There is a new pricing model in place that includes five pricing groups and a single global price list, as opposed to the more than 400 pricing groups under the previous structure. Training certifications have been cut from six to four, exams and courses from 100 to fewer than 15, and the time and cost of the curriculum has been cut in half. Avaya Connect also introduces a new global partner relationship management system that will be the de facto interface between Avaya and its channel partners worldwide, adding a top layer of consistency and standardization to the program.

The new financial benefits and enhancements to technical, marketing, and sales support programs associated with Avaya Connect are scheduled to go live in February 2010, giving partners time to absorb and understand the impact of the changes, with the existing medal status (silver, gold, platinum) remaining intact through September 2010. In October, the new requirements model will go into effect, with partners being re-leveled according to those requirements.

In addition to partner feedback, Dickman notes that internally, Avaya realized its previous channel model and infrastructure wouldn’t support its strategy to grow its channel business because of not only the inconsistencies of a fragmented program, but also a lack of scalability.

“In order to embrace the high-touch, channel-centric model, we had to have a much improved, more streamlined channel program that would entice partners to join and allow our existing partners to grow much more quickly than they have in the past,” he says.

While the overhaul was initiated well before the deal to acquire Nortel (News - Alert) was agreed upon, Avaya Connect will have a significant role in integrating the Nortel partners into the Avaya structure. With the purchase not yet finalized, Avaya is undertaking planning efforts for the coming integration of the two programs, but one thing is certain – Avaya Connect will be the global channel program for the combined entities.

“By day one, when the deal closes, we should be able to give quite specific guidance and direction as to where we are heading with the program,” Dickman promises. “We are going to transition the Nortel partners in a structured, methodical way into Avaya Connect.”

Whether the timing of the development and rollout of Avaya Connect alongside the Nortel acquisition is merely good fortune or brilliant foresight might be debated; either way, Avaya has positioned itself well for what will be a Herculean task once Nortel officially becomes part of Avaya.

The process of bringing a large existing customer and partner base into a new program won’t be an easy one to manage. But, the simplification and continuity injected into Avaya Connect will make it significantly easier to accomplish than with Avaya’s old channel model and will make its partners more productive and make it easier for them to be the face of Avaya for their customers. If it all goes as Dickman explained, Avaya Connect will be a three-way winning proposition for Avaya, its partners, and its user base. IT

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