Committed to the cause

I recently attended Avaya’s 50th Partner Community Council (PCC) conference in Nice, and it was highly apparent that the loyalty the channel community has for Avaya still holds strong. Indeed, staying with us for the past 10 months has admittedly been a big commitment for our partners. Some customers have been wary to invest in Avaya projects, and our competitors have been quick to spread fear and uncertainty, saying that Avaya is on the way out.

The announcement this week that we will definitely exit Chapter 11 must come as a relief to even our most faithful partners. There are three pillars central to our emergence. We are re-energising our employees and also ensuring that customers remain core to everything we do. But the glue that holds the first two together is the partners, so to all those many, many partners who stayed the course, I want to say thank you.

But I also want them to look forward to what is ahead. Their loyalty is not going to go unrewarded. We’ve already rewarded partners’ commitment with a loyalty programme, and we believe they will really reap the benefits now. Once our financial restructuring is completed, we will have an extra $300 million in cash available each year, so we can massively increase our R&D budget. We’ve also restructured our business operations, so today it’s easier than ever for partners to do business with us. And we will become a public company, showing that investors are also banking on Avaya’s success.

This all points to one overall upshot – growth for Avaya, growth for partners, and growth for our customers. We have long-term investment and a clear strategy to grow our business. Our greater investment in technology (of which I will post some more details in the next few days) means that we will be able to bring solutions to market faster than ever before – and we will keep working with partners to meet the transforming needs of our customers. The doubts seeded by our competitors will not be realised – our shackles are now off and we are stronger than ever.   

Partners will also see more advantages to working with Avaya. More initiatives are on the way to enhance existing benefits and add new ones. The message to the channel is clear: the more you work with Avaya, the more you will be rewarded.

The PCC opened my eyes as to just how much confidence partners have in Avaya. Now, with a major load off our shoulders, I can be confident too in saying that our partners are going to reap the rewards for their steadfast loyalty.