Arturo Vargas, Channel Director, Avaya Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean Regions, explains how strategic partnerships drive growth and customer value in the diverse Latin American market.
What does your position entail?
The Latin American business communications market is vast, diverse and characterized by a high level of personalized attention. This presents significant challenges for a company like Avaya, whose mission is to drive innovation, helping our customers improve efficiency, enhance their offerings and stay competitive by elevating the customer experience.
Being a channel director in this setting is akin to conducting an orchestra, with the company’s strategy serving as the score and the business partners comprising the channel ecosystem acting as musical instruments. Each partner plays an indispensable role in creating harmony; a missing note can disrupt the execution of your strategy. Therefore, it is crucial to develop individual growth plans tailored to each partner’s interests and profile, while ensuring these plans align with Avaya’s strategy.
Like a skilled conductor, the channel director is responsible for orchestrating the timely implementation of these individual plans co-ordinated with annual results. To achieve this, it is necessary to establish training, demand generation and incentive programs structured like LEGO pieces. This way, channel managers, in collaboration with their partners, can create customized plans and monitor the expected ROI through MBRs and QBRs.
Another significant responsibility in this role is to function as a skilled mediator, reconciling the various legitimate interests of each party in pursuit of mutual growth. The primary objective is to safeguard the interests of the commercial relationship, which is to provide our clients with the most efficient service through the best value proposition.
However, to be an effective mediator, it is imperative to cultivate trusting personal relationships, which can be achieved through well-defined policies, transparent account leadership, the commitment of senior management, all while keeping a focus on a customer-centric Go-To-Market strategy.
Can you explain how your company works with channel partners?
The channel program serves as the cornerstone for achieving our growth mission in the Latin American market. It stands as the most cost-effective option for meeting the diverse needs of our customers across a vast territory while ensuring swift time-to-market, a critical factor when actively supporting our customers in their business innovation processes.
Avaya’s Edge Reseller program is structured around Solution Tracks and encompasses three program levels: Emerald, Sapphire and Diamond.
What is your management philosophy?
My management philosophy centres on fostering mutually beneficial partnerships with our partners. We focus on identifying areas where we can jointly create value-driven propositions for opportunities, customers and/or markets.
In Latin America, it is commonplace for commercial relationships to be both collaborative and competitive. Often, collaboration occurs until an opportunity arises where competition becomes necessary. As long as both sides adhere to good practices and maintain respect for boundaries, this dynamic need not negatively impact our mutually profitable business endeavors. Prioritizing areas of alignment allows us to maximize ROI and maintain a pragmatic approach, benefitting our clients.
Do you work differently with channel partners in Latin America compared to other regions?
In Latin America, personal relationships with senior managers of our key business partners carry significant importance. This is because, within the Latin American business culture, trust established between individuals and the level of trust within institutional relationships between companies hold equal importance. Our region places great emphasis on social connections and this aspect is distinctly reflected in our business interactions.
How do your partners deliver Avaya solutions to end-users?
Our strategy of ‘Innovation without Disruption’ encapsulates how our partners deliver Avaya solutions to end-users. The lessons learned during the pandemic underscore the importance of avoiding disruptions in the adoption of technology to create memorable experiences. This is why our partners provide solutions tailored to each client’s situation, offering both OPEX and CAPEX models, on-premises and cloud solutions. This sends a clear message to the market: ‘Set your timeline, move at your own pace and unlock unique capabilities to propel your business forward.’ It is all about moving forward your way, making your choices, setting your pace and achieving your success!
How do you ensure channel partners flourish in a highly competitive market?
We collaborate with our partners in three key development areas:
- Human factor: Our focus is on enablement programs. These programs empower our partners to transform their sales teams into business consultants and their technical support teams into experts in integrating and operating next-generation solutions.
- New business models: The array of technological offerings is vast and ripe for reshaping how we work and serve our customers. The challenge lies in making this technology accessible to the Latin American market. Adopting new service-based models is the key to achieving this accessibility, allowing customers to embrace technology at their own pace.
- Demand generation: The evolving telecommunications market presents both significant growth opportunities and threats, with new competitors emerging rapidly from the software world. To thrive, we must expand our customer base. Hence, a joint marketing plan becomes crucial, enabling us to connect with new decision-makers within our existing customer base and reach out to new customers. Innovation can emerge in any aspect of a company and all are seeking ways to digitize their business relationships. This presents a significant sales opportunity for us.
What are the latest trends you see emerging across the channel?
The top five trends I see emerging in our industry are:
- Cloud-based customer experience solutions
- Generative Artificial Intelligence in contact centres
- Virtual office/hybrid use cases
- Communications APIs for business: Enabling businesses to create highly personalized experiences for their customers, enhancing connectivity and engagement.
- Innovation without disruption: Customers are seeking innovative solutions that do not disrupt their day-to-day operations, emphasizing the importance of seamless integration and adoption.
Which regions do you see offering the most opportunities for your company?
In today’s global economic landscape, marked by challenges such as the conflict in Ukraine, inflation control, escalating interest rates, nearshoring and the repercussions of climate change, the Latin American region stands out as a distinctive growth prospect for Avaya. Countries like Brazil, Mexico and Colombia present unique opportunities.
Furthermore, within vertical solutions, Avaya boasts high adoption rates, particularly in offerings like our Avaya Experience Platform (AXP), a public cloud solution designed to empower companies of all sizes to innovate seamlessly, introducing new features for both customers and employees without disruption. This solution aligns with the evolving needs of businesses, making it an invaluable asset in today’s dynamic landscape.