Transcript for Avaya's Barat Dickman on Avaya Channel Programs
Blair Pleasant: Hi, this is Blair Pleasant. I am at the Avaya Partner Conference in beautiful Cancun, and with me is Barat Dickman. Barat is the Senior Director of Global Channel Programs and Go to Market Strategy.Good morning, Barat.
Barat Dickman: Good morning, Blair.
Blair: So what can you tell us about Avaya’s Channel Programs and some of the latest news?
Barat: Well, we have some very exciting things going on right now and we will be making some announcements today in our Partner Conference in just a couple of hours about some of the changes that we are making to our Channel Program, virtually all of which we think are going to be very well received by our partners. We are basically taking the Channel Program and using it to drive the strategy that we’ve been talking about for the last year or so.We are going to be placing more of our reward dollars or our compensation dollars for the partners around driving those things that drive Avaya strategy, but are very much the same things that the partners are driving themselves.These are things like selling the broader constructs, selling the broader portfolio, the full stack, acquiring net new customers, growth – and particularly growth with our strategic products or our newer products, as well as helping to grow the embedded base and upgrade our existing customers.
So a lot of the focus of the changes are around driving those particular behaviors. The beauty of it, though, is that the changes are built on the existing channel programs. There are not really any major changes to the structure of the program so we remain consistent and predictable with how partners earn the dollars, but it is just that their opportunity for dollars is going to go up because the products that they are eligible for – the products that are eligible in those programs – are going to go up over the course of the next year.
What we have done and we talk internally in Avaya about what we call SPEC. It stands for Simple, Predictable, Enhanced, and Consistent. And what we have done in the last six months is designed these programs to drive those objectives I just mentioned and also adhere to those standards of SPEC. We ask each other, “Is it designed to SPEC?” And we think they are and we are very excited to announce those today. I could share details about them if you would like.
Blair: Sure, please go ahead.
Barat: We really have about three or four major programs that we run inside Avaya Connect and one of the great things about Avaya’s Channel Program is we don’t have 10 different programs that partners are required to apply for and claim in order to get to a competitive street price or a fair partner margin. Ours are frankly very straightforward and very simple and most of them run on autopilot. There is not a lot of activity by the partner to claim or become eligible for these programs. One of the centerpieces of our program is our deal registration program. Deal registration, as you all probably know, is a very standard channel program in the technology industry. We are increasing the rate of our deal registration program on some of our products as well as having these additional portfolios – this adding our entire networking portfolio, we are adding our entire video portfolio via Radvision, a company that we just recently acquired, and we are adding our new mid market solution, the IP Office Server Edition product, as well as some other applications that are going into that program.So we are very excited to announce that for the channel today.
A second program we run is called Grow Right and that is mostly run here in the U.S., but it will be globalized over the course of the next year. That program pays partners back for their growth of strategic products. And what’s interesting and exciting about that is that we are expanding the portfolios that are in that list of strategic products that are eligible to receive a Grow Right growth rebate. And so we will be adding the entire Radvision portfolio, the entire networking portfolio, some of the IP office constructs that we sell, additional applications like Aura Messaging and Aura Conferencing. And this, by the way, is on top of all the products we added last year, which include things like Konftel, the Sipera Border Controller and ACE, which is on top of all the products that are in there to begin with, which were some of our strategic applications, things like Session Manager or the Contact Center apps.Sowe are pretty excited about that one too and very excited to tell the partners about that today and share that good news with them.
Blair: Great. Well, thank you so much, Barat.
Barat: Sure.