One of the more interesting aspects of the Canadian market is Eastern region of the country and the Province of Quebec.
The region comprises one of the great cities of the world in Montreal along with several smaller communities spread across four provinces such as Quebec City, Halifax, Moncton and St. John’s. To make matters more challenging for high tech executives is some of these markets only speak French. Miles Davis, the former channel chief of Avaya Canada, was recently promoted to run the Eastern region for Avaya and told CDN that he and his team will be taking a fresh look on how the networking and collaboration vendor will segment this market going into the 2016 year.
Davis said Avaya Canada plans to bring a new focus for the Eastern region based on two portfolios: shortest-path bridging protocol also known as switch-fabric and cloud.
“Shortest-path bridging is standards based and provides a real advantage in terms of extending and managing networks. It also ensures that customers get the best of software-defined networks. We believe this has upward potential for us in this market,” Davis said.
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“We are also looking to drive UC in the cloud and I want the Eastern Region to lead by example on this. “
For Avaya Canada, the subsidiary has broken down the market segments in areas for mid-market, commercial and top enterprise accounts. Avaya Canada’s sales organization and its network of channel partners are aligned under these three areas. Davis added that the company has tweaked these groups slightly to 200 seats to 500 seats for mid-market, 500 to 5,000 for commercial and 5,000 and up in top enterprise. Another wrinkle in the strategy is for Avaya Canada executives to develop proof cases in specific vertical industries for each of these segments working through channel partners.
“The Eastern Canada is one of the more diverse regions in the country. When you look at Halifax, N.S., or Moncton, N.B., or St. John’s N.F.L.D. and compare it to Quebec City which has a distinct government focus with a different sales cycle and other concerns such as who is in power it can get quite challenging. Then you put in a metropolitan centre such as Montreal and it becomes a completely different mix of factors,” he said.
What Davis plans on doing for the next fiscal is to fine tune the coverage for Avaya Canada in the Eastern region by creating hybrid reps that can cover more market focuses than just one, while keeping more reps in place for each segment in Montreal.
Davis also said that Avaya Canada will bring in the Partner Alliance Council for the first time in Canada this month. They will also double down its effort with service providers such as Bell, Telus, Rogers, Videotron and Cogeco.
The acquisition of Esna Technologies will also play a big role in 2016 as Avaya has tapped this company to help them build everyday business apps.
“Esna allows us to be even more innovative with customers. The focus is now to take this fantastic technology and start telling a story of innovation. In my current role I want to build out this process and deliver this message to partners and customers and articulate the value we bring to the table,” he said.