Avaya has launched a new multitenant UCaaS platform to cater for the small business market. I spoke to Roberto Schmidl, VP Germany Small and Medium Business Unit, Avaya Germany, to get an understanding of the new UCaaS offering. Roberto is responsible for services and sales in small and medium business for Germany so was best placed to give me the lowdown.
In November, a completely online managed Avaya UCaaS platform arrived for the SMB market. The target is sub 50 seats like start-ups that can simply sign up online for their own Avaya solution. They can choose from three bundles – including bundled minutes – and consume in a commoditised fashion. End customers can even order their own thirty day trial via the online platform.
Avaya UCaaS for resellers
I asked Roberto whether resellers could utilise this online platform. “We are using an agency model. So, we’re signing up untraditional resellers who maybe already sell minutes, rather than the traditional telco resellers”. All this enables the current minutes carrier or IT specialist to become the one stop shop for customers requiring a cloud phone system or full blown UCaaS solution.
Avaya self-service
I learned that you can now subscribe to Avaya seats online via their self-service store. Already available in the US, this is now available in Germany too.
Similar to the Avaya Equinox meeting solution, which is also a self-service store, Roberto told me that Avaya is investing heavily in the “store-style” UCaaS. “Over the next 6 months we should expect to see more of this”.
This exposes Avaya to the UCaaS small business market where businesses wish to consume telecoms services like they purchase their mobiles. “Everything starts with a Google search,” Robert told me as we discussed the shift to UCaaS becoming a commoditised product.
“I absolutely think that’s where the market is going and where we need to be. The market analysis and research points to this. Smaller businesses have no IT buyer to run a procurement”
We agreed that the sales person’s role has changed from visiting customers to constant brand awareness and thought leadership. Roberto made me aware that this is the case but remains dependent on the segment. “Sometimes we have to deal with a customised solution rather than an off the shelf model – different verticals still require a level of modification”.
The role of customer success in self-service UCaaS
Avaya has created a customer success team to onboard self-service customers and help them go through sign up and get familiar with the solution. Typically, Roberto estimated that it now only takes around an hour to procure an Avaya UCaaS solution. This is a drastic reduction from the typical sales cycle where salespeople could have multiple visits, statements of work and order forms.
Roberto highlighted the importance of the customer success role even though the premise of self-service suggests you are on your own.
“It’s important we did some testing with the self-service technology but also to introduce experts to field FAQs for things we take for granted”. We spoke about the ever scary theme of number porting when customers consider moving from ISDN to VoIP for the first time.
