Mitel has been a hot topic in the UC industry over the last few months, particularly following its acquisition of UC company ShoreTel. This unique communications company powers more than 2 billion connections throughout the world every day. Not only that, but Mitel also has 3,500 partners and channels that allow it to serve more than 100 countries with some of the most advanced cloud strategies available.
As we move on from a year of disruption and digital transformation in the UC space to a future that's set to be packed with even more updates and exciting evolutions, I caught up with Mitel to find out more about its strategy for 2018. Mitel’s newly appointed SVP of EMEA, Jeremy Butt, spoke to me about Mitel’s plans for evolving its channel programme and empowering channel partners for success in the future.
What's Your Mission at Mitel, and Your Personal Goals for 2018?
After a long history of involvement with the vendor side of UC with brands like Avaya, Motorola, and Westcon-Comstor, Jeremy Butt joined Mitel as SVP of EMEA at the beginning of October this year. In other words, he's been working in the role for less than two months, and he's already looking ahead at what the new year will bring.
I asked Jeremy what his plans are for the company, and if he had any personal goals that he wanted to achieve as we move into 2018.
"I came to Mitel in October. Mitel is a name that a lot of people know. We've been in the industry for many years, and we've made several acquisitions of well-known brands. My mission is to drive our go to market strategy as it pertains to the marketplace, and how we intend to leverage and empower our channels going forward."
How Are You Going to Shake Things Up in the Partner Programme?
In a recent announcement, Jeremy suggested that he would be looking for ways to "shake up" the partner programme. I was interested to find out what he meant by that, and what we could expect to see from the evolving company.
"Mitel has been in the channel for many years with many products and programmes. I'll be looking to update our partner programme in a way that makes it more relevant for today’s market and leverages the channel even more."
According to Jeremy, the partner community needs three things from a vendor to be successful:
"You've got the product itself, the programme, and the people. While we have a good reputation for those three things, I think we could get them working in better harmony so that we can drive even greater success for our partners."
What Refinements Are Part of Your New Plan?
As unified communications increasingly gains traction, partners want more support from their vendors, not more part codes. However, Mitel now has a lot of codes and products in its kit bag. Despite this, it’s been searching for ways to consolidate its portfolio to simplify things for its partners. I wanted to know how Jeremy planned to continue simplifying things as we move into 2018.
"Refinement and simplification are definitely going to be a focus going forward – and that's a global piece of work for Mitel to consider. After all, channel partners don't go out of their way to find complex vendors to work with. They want simple investments that allow them to focus on what they're good at. I'm a big believer that the success of a partner programme relies on clarity, simplicity and transparency, to make sure everyone understands what their responsibilities are."
How Are You Going to Simplify Moving Forward?
Jeremy told me that although Mitel is focusing on simplifying the roadmap, he wasn't able to share exactly where it was headed at this point - particularly after it'd only just acquired ShoreTel.
