Avaya introduces new worldwide channel program

The announcement was made at the 2010 Avaya EMEA Partner Conference held in Prague, Czech Republic.

Avaya Connect will enable channel partners to grow their businesses by expanding financial benefits, enhancing technical, marketing and sales support and providing a highly effective, simplified training and certification program. The global framework also recognizes the needs of different types of partners - from system integrators and services providers to small and mid-size business resellers - and addresses them appropriately.

"The idea is simple. By building stronger connections with our partners and enabling them to be successful, we can reach farther to better serve customers. Avaya Connect fundamentally helps drive consideration and closure of Avaya solutions, enables our partners to engage more customers with our innovative products and services portfolio, and provides customers better choices to move their businesses forward,"

said Jeremy Butt, Vice President, Worldwide Channels.

Serious Rewards, Greater Simplification, More Support

The new Avaya Connect program includes a number of financial enhancements and benefits for channel partners, including tiered global discounts, new business incentive programs to help drive growth and funding to help improve vendor and partner consideration, market coverage and closure rates.

Avaya has simplified a number of critical program elements and transaction processes so partners can respond more quickly to opportunities. A new single, global price list will make it easier for customers to understand pricing and faster for partners to develop quotes. The new program transitions from using post-sales rebates to providing point of sale credits, which reduces processing time to seconds. In addition, Avaya Connect streamlines the new partner application process to allow completion in under two hours. Partners also have access to a broader range of marketing support services and comprehensive, technical and design resources.

Training and certification

The new Avaya Connect training model saves partners both time and money while improving their ability to build technical skills in Avaya solutions and services. The new model shifts from product-based training to solutions-based training focused on Unified Communications, Contact Center and Small and Midsize Business solution lifecycles - from design to sales, integration and maintenance. This comprehensive approach enables partners to better meet the customers' needs today and into the future.

The new training program has been streamlined from nearly 97 learning and certification tracks to 13 solutions-based tracks, significantly reducing the time and complexity needed to achieve credentials. The curriculum for each path has been both optimized and condensed to minimize participants' time away from the job. In some cases, the time commitment is decreased by up to 50%. In addition, under the new program, more instructor-led and virtual classes offered world-wide allow participants to study with an instructor and interact with the latest remote lab technologies without requiring major travel.

Partner Level Certifications and Specializations

Avaya Connect simplifies partner requirements and processes for Platinum, Gold, Silver and Authorized levels and makes them more consistent across international theaters to enable partners to expand globally. As channel partners increase certification and competency levels and specializations, the Avaya Connect program offers higher benefits and discounts.

Avaya is also extending its Services Expert and Small and Medium Enterprise Expert specializations globally. These specializations recognize partners that have developed a strong services or small-mid-size enterprise practice. Both designations were previously only available in North America.

The new program also includes a Geographic Designation component to better support the needs of multinational customers and the partners who support them. Regional or global level designations will help these customers find the right partners for their needs, while taking advantage of centralized resources where it makes sense.

"One of the key factors of the new Avaya Connect program is that it recognises the needs of different types of partners - from systems integrators and service providers to small and mid-size business resellers - and addresses them appropriately. This is something we haven't seen before from Avaya," said Phil Adams, Systems Sales Director at distributors Nimans and Rocom.

Avaya Connect will be globally operational on February 1, 2010 to enable existing partners to transition to the new program by February 2011.