Avaya takes aim at “ambulance chasers”

Avaya took the launch its IP Office 7.0 to outline a strategy to tighten up its channel and expand its reach into the SME market.
The event in London last week announced new features in IP Office 7.0 which will help Avaya partners upgrade from legacy Nortel and Avaya PBX products while retaining end points such as desktop handsets. With somewhere in the region of 15m legacy Nortel devices such as the Norstar and BCN still hanging around from the 1980s, “it offers a large heritage opportunity for us and a lot of our partners have asked us for a smoother upgrade path, “ explains Jeremy Butt, VP worldwide channels at Avaya.
IP Office has become the main focus of the firm’s SME product line since the Nortel acquisition. Prior to the new 7.0 version, customers upgrading from the legacy products would have needed to buy more end points and undergone a somewhat laboriousness configuration and migration process.
Outside of new products, Butt outlined Avaya’s aim to “make the requirements for [certification] more rigorous and change some thresholds to protect SME partner investment.
“[Partners] have to invest in skills and people and what we don’t want is them having their legs cut out by ambulance chasers – so we will continue to invest in the SME reseller market space and protect those that have made the investment with us,” he added.
Last year, Avaya launched a specialist SME partner programme aimed at helping partners that target smaller customers but don’t hit the $250k revenue mark required to be a Silver Partner. The programme, “was well adopted in the US but not so well adopted in Europe,” explains the channel chief.
While, Butt admits that the firm maybe “hasn’t done enough” to promote the SME partner track, it is actively seeking to grow the number in the UK over the year. He feels the list of benefits such as lead generation, heavily discounted demo kit, deal registration and MDF is pretty impressive. He explains: “SME experts with the basic certs compared to a non SME expert sells four times as much product… that’s why we would like to have a few more, because the simply sell more stuff.”
Butt also talked about upcoming plans to put in simple revenue thresholds. “It’s not a massive number but it’s a statement of intent - if you haven’t done, say, $10k.” Although he adds “if someone has no revenue but kept up with certification you probably want to keep them around – but if they have neither – they are out!”
Avaya’s tougher stance was applauded by several resellers. Paul Blundell, MD for iQual, an SME-certified Avaya partner thought it was a sensible move, “We have had problems with the ambulance chasers… there are a lot of people that go in there, they are already selling to an existing client who says they want a IP Office and they can just contact the distributor and pick something up with six months to get on-boarded…. But they sell that system in with no plan to get accredited.”
In some case, Blundell thinks that untrained partners often implement systems poorly which could damage the reputation of the wider community of certified Avaya partners. “The exam is not easy, which is a good thing,” he adds.