Avaya opens ROADS to partners

Avaya has announced a new strategy to recruit partners by incentivising distributors to improve their on-boarding processes.

Speaking to more than a hundred partners at its UK Partner Connect event this week, the vendor outlined its ROADS (Recruit, Onboard, Authorise, Develop & Sustain) initiative to help grow its channel. Under the scheme, distributors will be paid up to £1800 for each new partner that meets key training and revenue milestones within the first twelve months.

According to Claire Macland, head of marketing and go-to-market for Avaya EMEA (pictured), how distributors choose to use the reward will be up to them but added, “the more you incentivise [partner managers], the better it will be for recruitment.”

Avaya has several thousand partners across Europe and the on-boarding push will include the telephony, data and video portfolio. Macland believes that the firm’s 400 UK partners provide good coverage but feels there is still room. “We are looking to recruit 94. Four being big partners, and 90 which would complement our SME and midmarket drive,” she adds.

All Avaya’s distributors, including Westcon, Scansource Communications and Avnet have committed to ROADS with David Grant, senior vice president for Westcon convergence commenting: “It’s one of the most comprehensive on-boarding programmes we’ve seen and the extensive background consultation and preparation Avaya has carried out is testimony to its on-going promise to be easier to do business with.”

Macland’s aim to grow Avaya's partner community by 25 percent with ROADS is strengthened by new products including its new Aura Virtualized Environment, a VMware Ready platform for unified communications and virtualised applications.

Avaya also launched a new Virtual Learning Campus which will, for the first time, allow partners access to online learning tools and exams to complete certification.