What a great show put on by Avaya at their annual meetup in Austin. Sponsored by the IAUG (Avaya User Group) over 2400 attendees filled the halls of the Austin Convention Center for 4 days of technology talk with their customers and partners. Many Canadian customers and partners also attended.
The Conference features hundreds of speaking and learning sessions, put on by Avaya associates and partners. This year, BrantTel's own Michel Lalonde did a session on how to optimize voice quality with a Cloud solution. With over 25 attendees, the content was well received. BrantTel sent 3 staff members to Engage this year, Michel, Navjit Dhillon and Frank Mirecki were all in attendance for the 4 day event.
Avaya Initiatives
Avaya put a heavy focus on change.
It is not technology led change but client-led change that is critical to thrive in today’s business world. Avaya believes that is accomplished by the following strategy: 1) looking through the client’s lens, 2) aligning the Avaya business to its client’s needs and 3) focusing on the user and customer experience.
However, according to Research by Brightline with the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2017 that surveyed 500 executives it was found that only one in ten reached their strategic goals, and 53 per cent agreed that poor delivery capability is a source of competitive disadvantage. So why would Avaya be any different?
Well it appears Avaya has made significant investments in innovating around making the customer’s business needs to deliver value and differentiate a top priority with Customer Roadmap Workshop that bridges the gaps between customer business issues and desired outcomes.
The gaps are bridged by understanding and leveraging the following key areas for the client and their unique impact to the client’s business. It is important to note that the Customer & User Experience is front and centre to the Roadmap Process.
For example, poor customer satisfaction may be the business issue and the desired outcome might be increase customer satisfaction by 10% through Blended Artificial Intelligence Call Centre technologies and processes to ensure the customer’s customers receive the best possible customer service experience through the blending of the unique strengths of the human CC agent and AI technologies. This is a highly simplified summary of an example that would only be possible after a full engagement in the overall four week long workshop.
Avaya has developed a Client Roadmap Workshop with the objective of capturing insights from executive, operations, technology and financial leaders necessary to ensure the current state and desired future state are well understood in order to provide the most robust and insightful recommendations possible.
The deliverables are a unique set of actionable and insight-based recommendations with a High Level Roadmap on how to transform the organization to the future state necessary to overcome the key business issues and reach the desired business outcomes.
BrantTel Networks has been developing a Customer Strategic Competitive Advantage strategy, where we help our customers solve their business problems, and turn them into outcomes that help their business grow. Reach out to your BrantTel representative to learn more about our program.
Lastly - Peyton Manning
Given the completion of the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl just days away who better to quote to reinforce this message than a champion quarterback like Peyton Manning who said, "If you wait for others to initiate change, you automatically become a follower." The key here is that to thrive as a leader you must initiate change and not wait to follow others. Not surprising for a communication technology event. Innovation which is a form of change is one of the key drivers of business growth for any technology company.
Peyton Manning Keynote - Takeaways
Peyton Manning's keynote was a lesson on teamwork, here's the key messages that we captured listening to this Hall of Fame Quarterback.
Be faster than your competitors.
Be more prepared than your competitors.
Embrace disruption for growth.
Be resilient, and bounce back.
Abandon old routines for new rewards.
Develop deep communication skills. Listen and ask the right questions.
Never stop being coached.
Teamwork is a we thing, not a me thing. Embrace the collective.
Pretty good advice to start off 2019 Peyton!