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Channel key to future Avaya plans
With its shares going onto the New York Stock Exchange next week the firm has outlined some of its growth plans, with the channel very much part of the future
Avaya's turnaround is almost complete with the firm's shares being traded on the New York Stock Exchange from Wednesday of next week.
It has been a year long effort to get the firm, which slipped into Chapter 11, back to its former position but throughout that process the firm has kept the channel in the loop and pledged to get back to winning ways.
"Our listing on the NYSE is an important milestone in Avaya's next chapter as a public company," said Jim Chirico, president and CEO of Avaya "We're proud to join the other industry leading companies listed on the NYSE. This will provide increased transparency to our various stakeholders with a goal of creating long-term value for our new stockholders."
In an SEC filing the firm revealed that as of September 30, 2017, the vendor had approximately 6,300 channel partners and for fiscal 2017 the product revenue coming from the channel represented approximately 73% of our total product revenue.
The same filing revealed the vendor's growth plans, including expanding its cloud and mobility offerings. The firm is also looking to invest in open standards, product differentation and innovation.
Channel investment was also part of the plans with Avaya looking to work more closely with existing partners and distributors.
"We intend to continue investing in our channel partners and sales force to optimize their market focus, enter new vertical segments and provide our channel partners with training, marketing programs and technical support through our Avaya Edge program. We also leverage our sales and distribution channels to accelerate customer adoption and generate an increasing percentage of our revenue from our new high-value software products, video collaboration, midmarket offerings and user experience-centric applications," the vendor stated.
The firm also had to outline the potential risks that it could face and one of those was any undermining of its channel strategy.
"An important element of our go-to-market strategy to expand sales coverage and increase market absorption of new products is our global network of alliance partners, distributors, dealers, value-added resellers, telecommunications service providers and system integrators," the filing stated.
"Our financial results could be adversely affected if our relationships with channel partners were to deteriorate, if our support pricing or other services strategies conflict with those of our channel partners, if any of our competitors were to enter into strategic relationships with or acquire a significant channel partner, if channel partners do not become enabled to sell new products or if the financial condition of our channel partners were to weaken," it added.
Looping back to the ambitions for the short-term the focus on improving channel relationships is understandable and should benefit partners.
