Pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation process in enterprises. There has been a paradigm shift in the approach to customer service, employees and the company’s internal operations and India is well prepared to drive digital transformation locally and internationally. In an interview with Mansi Taneja, Fadi Moubarak, Vice President – Channels, Avaya talks about digitization, the potential of the Indian market and growth opportunities.
Pandemic has accelerated digitization around the world. What new opportunities have arisen for you?
Pandemic has brought about a paradigm shift in the approach to customer service, employees and the company’s internal operations. Working from home/working remotely has put many processes and habits at risk. Pre-pandemic, many of us would probably be resistant to change. After the pandemic, we have been force-trained in a positive way – mainly on the use of technology. And this is where digitization came into play.
The efficiency and customer experience has improved enormously. This is where the opportunities arise for us and our partners to keep experiences in sync across all channels to improve efficiency.
We have expanded our ecosystem of partners and continue to expand. Our portfolio of products and solutions is not just Avaya solutions, we are even growing complementary applications. We deliver all of that as a single point of contact for our partners and customers, instead of leaving the challenge of choosing and integrating the right business application only with the partner. We provide sales, pre-sale, after-sale, all support everywhere.
How do you see the digitization journey shaping the Indian market?
The Indian market is at the forefront of digital transformation. We come here and share practices from all over the world. But at the same time, we take some lessons from the Indian market and some of the ecosystem applications or products that are actually made in India around the world. We have a research and development center in India employing about 2000 people. We benefit from Indian innovation.
It’s not about technology, it’s about understanding customer requirements, customer journeys and leveraging digital transformation technologies to enable the smoothest and most efficient experience possible.
Our partners have played a major role in staying close to customers during these difficult times.
The nature of the business is shifting from the traditional capex model to a subscription and cloud model. This presents a challenge for cash flow, for revenue, because what we used to get as one big project, we now get revenue over a period of years. That’s one of the challenges. But it has opened the door for a much wider range of medium and SMB organizations to adopt the same type of advanced technologies known only to be used by large enterprises in the past.
Are you now focusing more on the SME segment? Is this segment growing fast for Avaya?
This means we now have a larger market. We will have some partners who are strong in SMB and mid-market and sell some traditional solutions. Now they are starting to sell these advanced solutions as they became affordable as an initial investment. And that’s the advantage.
In the past two or three months, we had some pretty large contact center customers that were unheard of in the previous world. Previously, implementation time took two to three months to bring customers live. Now it takes an average of a week to 10 days and the customer is up and running. That is a competitive advantage for our customer.
We work with them on the use cases of the operational functionality they are looking for. Once defined, it will be up and running in 7 to 10 days or two weeks. We have expanded our portfolio of distributors who also have resellers in Tier 3 & 4 cities. It’s a 360-degree approach to new solutions, new business models and reset subscription and cloud, new go-to-market and of course expanding coverage as such.
Where do you see India compared to your largest markets worldwide?
You will see that India is in the top five. We’ve always been very strong in India, we have our base in the top banks, top airlines – our technology is everywhere. Recently, we had great success with this Smart Cities initiative. It’s definitely a focus market for us and one of the top markets. And these are certainly exciting times for this digital transformation around the world and in India. It redefines how organizations operate and serve their customers.