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Avaya Midmarket Solution Overview

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved. Welcome to the Overview course for the Avaya Midmarket Solution. This course will familiarize you with the value of Avaya’s powerful and flexible Midmarket collaboration solution and give you insight as to how it can help your customers meet their strategic business objectives. After you compete this course, you will be able to describe the benefits of the Avaya Midmarket solution and understand what differentiates the Avaya Midmarket solution from competing solutions. Page 1
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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome to the Overview course for the Avaya Midmarket Solution.

This course will familiarize you with the value of Avaya’s powerful and flexible Midmarket collaboration solution and give you insight as to how it can help your customers meet their strategic business objectives. After you compete this course, you will be able to describe the benefits of the Avaya Midmarket solution and understand what differentiates the Avaya Midmarket solution from competing solutions.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This course is designed to provide you as a Sales Engineer with an overview of the Avaya Midmarket solution. You will find out what markets and customers we are targeting, what their typical pain points are and how we can use Avaya products to build a solution that solves their business issues. You will learn about some of our biggest competitors and how to beat them.

The course also provides links to Product Information Documents or PIDs , which hold more detailed information on the individual products that are used to build a solution. Take the time to go through those documents carefully, as they contain valuable information on the individual products that make up a midmarket solution and you will need this knowledge to pass the APDS– Avaya Midmarket Solution online test and earn the credential.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

A Student Guide or PDF version of the course content is available by clicking the Resources tab.

There are also Unified Communications (UC) and Networking glossaries that contain definitions for many of the terms used throughout this course.

Feel free to review and download or open any of the resources included with this course.

When you are ready, click Next to continue with this course.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Let’s begin with an introduction to the Midmarket. Welcome to Lesson 1: The Midmarket Opportunity.

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At the end of this lesson, you should be able to identify and explain the main Midmarket trends and key features, and describe the Avaya offer for Midmarket businesses.

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Why is going for the Midmarket relevant?

Midmarket businesses, companies with 10 million to 1 billion U.S. dollars of annual revenue, are growing rapidly. The U.S. Midmarket alone is the 4th-largest economy in the world, with more than 197,000 businesses employing 43 million people.

In 2012, the company KMPG conducted a survey targeting almost 400 Midmarket executives from U.S.- based companies with annual revenues in the range of 100 million to 1 billion dollars.

Some of their key findings regarding Midmarket businesses are:

More than two-thirds (or 70 percent) of Midmarket executives believe that the economy will improve over time, while 23 percent expect conditions to stay the same.

Forty-six percent of the executives say they have increased the number of employees and they plan continue increasing it in a modest way.

Sixty-two percent of the executives indicate that their companies have significant cash on the balance sheet.

Fifty percent declared that their companies' cash positions have increased from last year.

Fifty-eight percent of the executives expect no substantial changes until 2015.

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Sixty percent plan to increase capital spending over the year; the highest priority investment areas are information technology (43 percent), new products or services (39 percent), and acquisition of business (34 percent).

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All these numbers show that there is big potential in the Midmarket. However, while growing, Midmarket companies face common barriers such as pricing pressures, regulatory and legislative pressures, and lack of customer demand. Despite these obstacles, businesses in the Midmarket are aiming to become bigger and stronger and are looking for strategic growth opportunities by increasing capital investment after reducing costs and building cash reserves.

Midmarket companies are focusing on investing in information technology, and believe that cloud computing will have an impact on their business model operations. They have cash on hand and, according to the 2013 Forrester’s Forrsights survey, as many as sixty percent of them are interested in Unified Communications.

For all of these reasons, there is a considerable opportunity for Avaya and its partners within the Midmarket arena. Many opportunities are opening to support Midmarket businesses with communication and collaboration solutions to address their challenges and help them keep up with business trends.

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Many Midmarket businesses must also deal with the way customers want to address and relate to them. They are constantly challenged to improve the customer experience and thereby become more competitive and grow revenue. According to a 2014 Avaya research, customers want to deal with businesses that are proactive and can offer personalized service in real time.

Call centers have long been a useful tool for personal interaction with customers. However, today's market demands a multichannel customer experience. Customers want the businesses they deal with to be there for them—when, where, and how they need them to be—by way of email, chat, and online channels.

But research shows that only about twenty percent of all midsize businesses have the resources to deliver a completely blended customer experience automatically and in real time. The limited budgets and IT resources of most midsize companies today prevent them from having a clear view across all customer touch points.

According to the Global Industry Analysts, this focus of businesses on providing efficient customer service is fueling the growth of the call/contact center industry, and Midmarket is the fastest growing segment. The United States is the largest regional market at the moment, with analysts projecting that spending on contact center solutions will reach $337.8 billion by 2018. While the U.S. is the largest market to date, Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing, with revenue from the region projected to reach a compound annual growth rate of 18.9 percent.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By incorporating new technologies to allow customers to interact with businesses through a variety of channels, contact centers are emerging as important instruments against a backdrop of rising competition. According to a survey conducted by Deliotte in 2013, growth in the contact center industry will continue, driven by the need to improve service and/or to support business growth.

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Now, let’s look deeper into the details of current trends we are seeing in the Midmarket.

Click each tab to learn more about the challenges typical Midmarket companies need to deal with today.

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Workforce

Working outside the office is an increasing practice these days. Many Midmarket businesses are facing the challenge of having as many as 50 percent of their employees as a mobile workforce. Devices such as smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices are now standard business equipment. All of these need secure and reliable access to the company’s infrastructure to make life easy for the workforce while keeping the business’s data and information safe.

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IT Trends

Trends in the IT section are closely tied to the challenges in the workforce area. Midmarket companies need to enhance their mobile infrastructure, secure their bring-your-own-device (or BYOD) strategy, virtualize their servers, and thus optimize their IT infrastructure to service the new demands of their workforce.

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IT Support

Midsize companies usually have limited IT staff. However, they need to enhance their infrastructure and are looking for ways to minimize their exposure to risk, while at the same time reducing the complexity of their applications and operations. Thus the way their IT infrastructure is supported need to be easy and manageable with limited resources.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Midmarket companies are focused on solutions rather than products, as they are trying to solve business issues, not just IT problems. Midmarket buyers may not understand the implications that deploying a collaboration or multichannel contact center solution may have on their existing infrastructure, and may have limited IT resources. Therefore, they need a full-featured solution that is easy to use and maintain. For most of these companies, both simplicity and minimizing risks are highly valued, so presenting a complete solution is essential.

There is a need to leverage our capabilities and work as trusted advisors, addressing not only IT challenges but business issues to position a fully integrated solution–including networking, video, and security.

How to determine the right fit for any given customer? Avaya offers a variety of solutions for small to midsize businesses as well as large global Enterprises. So, when should you sell what?

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The first thing is to know your customer’s business. Get all the information you need to be able to assess your client and determine if the Avaya Midmarket solution is the right fit.

Businesses in the small to medium sector usually need to solve a technology problem. Typically, they have between 2 and 250 users who are most likely local workers. Their focus is primarily on essential telephony features, while any Unified Communications solutions will be just an aspiration.

Midmarket companies, on the other hand, have the need for a more complex solution.

They are growing businesses that usually support between 250 and 3000 users, and thus face different challenges. Such challenges can include the need to increase their workforce, often by adding mobile or teleworkers. Thus, Midmarket businesses need more advanced technology and an infrastructure that helps their workers stay connected and enhances their productivity.

Large global enterprises have needs that are more complex, and present challenges that would be correctly addressed with Avaya Aura®. Avaya Aura is a solution for midsize to enterprise, that is designed to deliver rich UC features for both distributed (standalone or linked to branch) and centralized opportunities.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This is the end of Lesson 1: The Midmarket Opportunity. We examined Midmarket trends and key drivers.

We recognized the great potential of Midmarket businesses, who want what we sell and have the cash on hand to spend on technology.

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At the end of every lesson, you will find one or more checkpoints to complete. These are for your own self-evaluation. Results are not being tracked.

Carefully read the question and click to select the correct answer or answers.

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You are about to start Lesson 2: Introduction to the Avaya Midmarket Solution.

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After you complete this lesson, you should be able to describe the solution offering for Midmarket businesses and recognize all the products within it. Also, you should be able to explain the technical capabilities of the Midmarket solution products to address customer needs and identify the correct fit of Avaya offering versus other Avaya solutions.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

In Lesson 1, we identified the uniqueness of the Midmarket. We will now describe a unique offering that addresses the special needs of that market. The Avaya Unified Communications and Collaboration Solution enhances collaboration and customer engagement to help businesses serve their customers better, maintain and enhance user productivity, and reduce overall costs.

Click each of the sections to hear more about the focus of the Avaya Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) solution for Midmarket.

(by clicking on Collaboration, you hear the following info)

Regarding Collaboration, the Avaya Midmarket Solution is meant to:

• Engage employees,

• Build relationships, and

• Leverage social networks.

(by clicking on Customers, you hear the following info)

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The Avaya Unified Communications and Collaboration solution also will allow Midmarket businesses to:

• Serve a larger base of customers

• Be more responsive to their customers’ needs, and

• Thus improve client satisfaction.

(by clicking on Productivity, you hear the following info)

Also, a well-integrated solution will enhance productivity by:

• Simplifying workflows,

• Speeding decision making, and

• Reducing time to market.

Plus reducing various costs, such as:

• Labor cost,

• Operating cost, and

• Opportunity cost.

(by clicking on the diamond image, you hear the following info)

The opportunity to play a highly strategic role for your clients, by positioning a full-size communications and collaboration solution is in your hands. What Midmarket customers need is a completely integrated solution that addresses their needs while also supporting key business goals.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

To build a powerful reliable solution for the Midmarket, we can integrate different products and applications to deliver a comprehensive solution from a single source‒reducing risk and improving the profitability of the deployment.

At the core of the Avaya Midmarket Solution is the IP Office Platform offering acomprehensive, quick-to-deploy, and easy-to-maintain solution that empowers IT departments to deliver collaboration-driven innovation to the business.

Click the Avaya IP Office Hexagon to learn more about IP Office features and different editions.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Avaya IP Office platform is an incredibly sophisticated system, yet remarkably simple to use. It gives businesses the power of a Unified Communications system that connects everyone—employees, customers, and partners, as they have the ability to respond immediately and share information‒anytime, anywhere ‒ from any device.

IP Office is ready to support the growing companies in the Midmarket. It is fully capable of handling up to 3000 users in a single site or across multiple sites (and up to 150 locations with IP Office Select), to help your clients perform better now and in the future, with a low total cost of ownership (or TCO).

IP Office empowers growing Midmarket companies with real-time communication and collaboration, impacting what matters most for their business: responsiveness, accessibility, and productivity!

For more information on the IP Office Platform, click the icon to go to the linked Product Information Document (or PID).

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Avaya IP Office is a smart investment in every way, not just because of the low total cost of ownership it offers, but also because it represents an investment that can be built upon. Software can be added easily to enhance and expand capabilities as they are needed; plus, it is proven to deliver great returns.

Different companies have different communication and collaboration needs, so there is an IP Office edition to put the right capabilities into the right hands:

• IP Office Basic Edition – includes telephony and messaging;

• IP Office Essential Edition – offers IP Telephony plus mobility;

• IP Office Preferred Edition – integrates Unified Communications;

• IP Office Server Edition – supports up to 2000 users, and includes all Preferred Edition features plus a centralized system management;

• IP Office Select – expands the Avaya Midmarket offering by combining the simplicity and value of IP Office with the foundation for the IP Office Hosted Cloud solution.

Each IP Office Edition adds to the features of the previous Edition.

Take a moment to review the features of each edition. Then, learn more about the details of the latest the IP Office Release updates and find out design consideration of the different editions by working though the Product Information Document.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

A solution would not be a solution, if it would only contain one product in different flavors. Avaya equips midsize companies with a powerful single-vendor solution that can put them at the same level as global enterprises by integrating feature products for:

Collaboration :

• Avaya Video collaboration products such as the Video solution for IP Office and AvayaLive Video

• Avaya web collaboration and audio collaboration are pieces built in to the IP Office platform

Networking:

• Avaya Wireless LAN and traditional networking components or Avaya Fabric for networking enablement,

Unified Communications and Mobility:

• Avaya one-X Mobile and Avaya Communicator,

Security:

• Avaya Session Border Controller and Avaya Identity Engines,

And Contact Center:

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

• Avaya Contact Center Select or

• IP Office Contact Center

This brings us to a full-featured and powerful solution that simplifies collaboration using a variety of devices, meeting both the needs of the business and user expectations. Moreover, as this is a proven solution, deployed in more than 300,000 businesses worldwide, customers can invest with confidence.

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Let´s take a closer look at what can be integrated with IP Office to build a Midmarket solution.

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[By clicking on the “Collaboration” red box in slide 24, displays the information in this slide. It would appear just the 4 blue color squares at first and by clicking on any of the buttons information regarding each product the information will be displayed].

Click the buttons to learn more about the collaboration products.

[Clicking on “Avaya Video Solution” displays the information in this slide].

The Avaya Video Collaboration for IP Office provides easy-to-deploy, secure, and affordable Scopia video collaboration for Midmarket companies.

• It integrates immediately and seamlessly with the IP Office server.

• It allows users to connect using a tablet, smartphone, laptop, or room-system and collaborate with anyone inside or outside the network.

To learn more about Avaya Video Collaboration for IP Office, click the link to the Product Information Document that provides a complete description of the product.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Avaya is extending video market leadership with the introduction of an Avaya-branded, hosted Video Conferencing-as-a-Service (or VCaaS), called AvayaLive Video.

The AvayaLive Video solution offers many features, including:

• Dedicated hosted virtual video meeting rooms for each meeting host

• A virtual room that supports up to 25 concurrent participants

• Persistent video presence for a number of meeting participants

• High-definition quality video and audio

• Built-in moderator controls

• Audio dial-in

• Support for PC and Mac desktop devices

• Support for Android and iOS mobile devices

• Content sharing: presentation and collaboration

• Group chat and private chat

• Security features such as tenant separation and encryption AES 128 by default and

• Customer reports on usage.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

It is important to note that the AvayaLive video offer is available only in the UnitedStates and Canada. To learn more about AvayaLive Video, click the link to the Product Information Document that provides a complete description of the product.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

IP Office features Avaya one-X Mobile Preferred for IP Office. This application allows users of mobile devices to remain connected to the IP Office communications server, thus enhancing productivity while on the move and enabling callers to reach you with just a single business number.

Avaya one-X mobile Preferred allows you to:

• Take the office extension with you,

• Use cellular, 3G/4G, or WiFi networks,

• Get IM presence and geolocation,

• Obtain directory integration, and

• Access rich conferencing capabilities.

Click the link to go to a Product Information Document (or PID) that provides a complete description.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

IP Office also integrates powerful audio, web, and video collaboration capabilities using Avaya Communicator:

Access to audio and video calls without logging into the corporate VPN,

• Web conferencing integration,

• Unsupervised transfer,

• Auto-answer support,

• Password change,

• Contact filtering enhancements,

• Simultaneous mode support,

• Support for account codes,

• Support for keyboard shortcuts (Windows only), and

• Support for the latest Windows and iOS versions.

Click the link to go to a Product Information Document (or PID) that provides a complete description of the product.

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[Clicking on the “Networking” red box in slide 24, displays the information in this slide].

Networking is essential to the Avaya Midmarket Solution to enable team and customer engagement.

Avaya delivers some of the most advanced technologies available, enabling enterprises to build dependable networks with a significant ROI.

Click the buttons to learn more about the Networking products.

Networking is essential to the Avaya Midmarket Solution to enable team and customer engagement. Avaya delivers some of the most advanced technologies available, enabling enterprises to build dependable networks with a significant ROI.

As more workers bring their own devices to the workplace, companies face different challenges, such as supporting a wide variety of devices and making a seamless transition between the access points.

The Wireless LAN 9100 series addresses this by recognizing the specific device and providing a customized experience based on the device type: tablets, smartphones, and laptops, either personal or corporate. In addition to support for Apple Bonjour for

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commonly shared Apple services, Wireless LAN 9100 also provides roaming assistance for “sticky” devices.

Wireless LAN 9100 offers a wired-like performance and predictability to mobile users, and puts business-critical application needs first. It provides application-level visibility and control that helps to ensure that the wireless network delivers uncompromised access to the applications and services users value most.

The solution is easily upgradable, so changing requirements can be met while the investment is protected.

The integrated architecture reduces equipment requirements and costs, and helps ensure that everything needed for a secure, high-performance wireless LAN is built into each wireless access point.

Click the link to go to a Product Information Document (or PID) that provides a complete description of the product.

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Traditional Ethernet Switches: to provide complete coverage ranging from the data center to the campus core through to the premium high-performance wiring closet all the way to the entry-level branch site. Avaya networking switches can be added for small sites, between 5 and 200 users, using ERS 3500 or for larger sites up to 2500 users with the ERS 4800.

Avaya Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture Fabric

For a small sub-set of midmarket customers, the Avaya SDN Fx Fabric solution enhances productivity by optimizing the way that networks are deployed, implemented, operated, and maintained. It delivers a true end-to-end network fabric capability leveraging the Shortest Path Bridging standard – with key Avaya enhancements and extensions such as IP Shortcut Routing and IP Multicast over SPB. This dramatically optimizes network availability, performance, and time to reconverge. The result is increased network uptime due to a “hands off” network core, reduced time to service for new applications, and increased agility due to the ability to provision the network on the fly.

Click the link to go to a Product Information Document (or PID) that provides a complete description of the products.

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Session Border Controller for Enterprises or SBCE is designed based on customers’ needs and requirements. The Avaya Session Border Controller offers all the functionality required for enterprises to terminate SIP trunks without the complexity of typical SBCs.

It is a software product that offers scalability up to 2000 sessions per server. Standard services include secure SIP trunking, to prevent denial-of-service or DoS attacks and spoofing. Advanced services include security without VPN for remote workers, media replication, and encryption. Either version can reside on one of two servers. It is easy to add to existing hardware platforms for cost-effective scaling.

Click the link to go to a Product Information Document (or PID) that provides a complete description of the product.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Avaya Identity Engines is a virtual-appliance solution for bring-your-own-device (or BYOD) security. It offers:

• Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) access,

• Guest access,

• Wired and wireless access, andit is vendor agnostic, which means that it works on any network, for any user and any

device.

Click the link to go to a Product Information Document (or PID) that provides a complete description of the product.

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[Clicking on “Contact Center” red Tab in slide 24 displays the information this slide].

Click the buttons to learn more about the Call center products.

[Clicking on “Avaya IPO CC” displays the information in this slide].

IP Office Contact Center is a complete customer interaction suite consisting of call recording for all agents, skills-based routing, voice, e-mail, and chat capabilities, and channel prioritization. It also includes historical and real-time reporting.

It can provide businesses with the means to engage customers in a professional and high-quality contact-center environment. For existing or potential IP Office customers with up to 2000 total employees and the need for 1 to 250 agents, agent groups, external destination, and remote agents, IP Office Contact Center provides superior contact-center value and capabilities.

IP Office Contact Center is available in Avaya’s configuration and management tools to enable quick installation. Plus it is provided with Avaya’s IPOSS Maintenance and Support Services.

To learn more about the latest release of IP Office Contact Center, including key features, pricing, and licensing data, click the link to go to a Product Information

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Document (or PID).

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Customer Engagement OnAvayaTM IPO CC is based on IP Office R9.1 FP and IP Office Contact Center 9.1 FP software. It is targeted to address the needs of small to midsize enterprises who require from 10 to 250 contact center agents. It is also targeted at customers of the same size who do not have contact center operations but want to take advantage of Unified Communications features.

For Customer Engagement OnAvayaTM Powered by Google Cloud IPO CC, the differentiatiors are:

• The richness of functionality offered by IP Office and IP Office Contact Center,

• The quality of support by Avaya – both in terms of the hosted service support and the underlying product support, and

The robustness and security of the Google Data Center.

It is important to note that IPO CC on Google Cloud offer is available only in the UnitedStates and Canada at this time. To learn more about the features and design of Customer Engagement OnAvaya, click the link to go to a Product Information Document (or PID).

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Avaya Aura Contact Center Select (AACCS)–requires Preferred Edition, shares Voicemail Pro channels/ports, supports 30 active agents plus supervisors on a 500v2, and 250 active agents plus supervisors on Server Edition; it includes voice & multimedia agent designation, supports fax & SMS, historical & real-time reporting for a single site only on 500v2, historical & real-time reporting for a single Server Edition network from primary server, requires IP Office 9.0.3, requires Windows server, and can be virtualized.

Learn more about Avaya Aura Contact Center Select in the separate AACCS Technical Sales Curriculum on avaya-learning.com.

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Now, you should have a good picture about the products we can combine into a Midmarket solution. But – there is more.

We also offer our cloud solution with the same rich features and user experience of our proven market-leading on-premise solutions.

A fully cloud hosted solution includes: Hosted IP Office, Multi-Instance, Full UC capabilities, Avaya Communicator, Avaya one-X Portal, Avaya one-X Mobile, Meet-Me Conferencing, configuration support, phone programming, and the ability to utilize existing connectivity.

With the Avaya Collaborative Cloud, customers can choose a private, public, or hybrid cloud to support discrete services or holistic solutions‒whether delivered by Avaya or our service provider partners.

Click the link to the Sales and Partner Portal for more information on Cloud Services.

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Now, lake a quick look at a few differentiators between an IP Office-centered and an Avaya Aura-centered solution.

IP Office is an easy-to-deploy package meant for companies with up to 3000 users. Avaya Aura is a solution for midsize to large businesses that require rich collaboration, contact center, and conferencing platforms that are open and customizable.

There are proven solutions with more than 350,000 IP Office systems worldwide, while the Avaya Aura platform has been deployed in every Fortune 100 manufacturing company and seventy percent of the world’s largest banks.

IP Office offers simple and quick installation and ease of use, while Avaya Aura features include open, industry-leading flexibility.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

You have completed Lesson 2: Introduction to the Avaya Midmarket Solution. Let’s recap briefly what we’ve discussed in this lesson.

Avaya has a range of integrated offerings that provide best-in-class communication and collaboration capabilities.

• Avaya offers the core communications platform with Avaya IP Office.

• Also, the Avaya solution for Midmarket offers collaboration applications such as:

• Avaya one-X® Mobile Preferred for IP Office, the Avaya Communicator, a state-of-the-art collaboration client for tablets and Windows desktops, and the Scopiamobile client. Both give your users the ability to work from anywhere just like they were in the office.

• Video for your users can be incorporated with Avaya Communicator experience for point-to-point or multi-party video conferences. Plus, Avaya offers best-in-class video solutions for desktop, mobile, and in-room.

• The IP Office core solution is surrounded by data networking solutions with Avaya Ethernet Routing Switches that auto-setup with IP Office, along with Wireless LAN offerings.

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• Security is built in across all the products, with secure remote IP phones, Avaya’s Session Border Controller for secure SIP trunking, and secure remote access to IP Office.

• Finally, the Contact Center offers for IP Office provide state of the art customer engagement for midmarket businesses.

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Carefully read the question and click to select the correct answer or answers.

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Carefully read the question and click to select the correct answer or answers.

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Welcome to Lesson 3: Selling to the Midmarket.

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After you complete this lesson, you will be able to name key drivers of Midmarket customers and explain how the Avaya Midmarket Solution addresses the pain points of typical customers within this market segment. Also, you will learn the questions to ask to uncover the information that you need to build a solution basic design.

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Before we dig deeper, let’s look at a real-life business case.

We’re looking at a bakery that began it’s business as a single-site company, but over the years has grown to include six stores and an 80,000 square-foot factory. The number of employees has increased from 35 in 2009 to over 400 today.

As they started growing and especially after they were featured in a television reality show, the number of calls to the business increased quickly. The old business communications system just wasn´t keeping up with growing the number of callers and orders. It became an urgent matter to upgrade the system, and—equally as important to the company—to keep it as simple as possible and to be able to scale as needed to accommodate the additional future growth they anticipated. Because of it’s simplicity and scalability, Avaya IP Office solution was the bakery´s bet.

To learn more about this real-life customer case, click the link below the image.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8ArUxKtWJE

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Now, what are the challenges and trends the bakery was facing?

• Competing against larger enterprises

• Workers outside the office and a mobile workforce

• Need to improve the customer service experience

• Need for a more complex communication and collaboration system, but limited IT resources to support it.

Does this seem familiar to what we talked about in previous lessons? Yes. The bakery, just as many other Midmarket companies, faced pain points in these three different areas: workforce, IT trends, and IT support.

How does the Avaya Midmarket Solution address these trends and drivers?

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

As we already mentioned, Avaya Midmarket solution is integrated with a series of products to address the communication challenges of the midsize business. Together these products comprise a complete and powerful solution that integrates unified communications, collaboration, security, and networking , aside from Virtualized Software available.

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© 2015 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

As we already mentioned, Avaya Midmarket solution is integrated with a series of products to address the communication challenges of the midsize business. Together these products comprise a complete and powerful solution that integrates unified communications, collaboration, security, and networking , aside from Virtualized Software available.

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What benefits do Midmarket businesses get from a solution based on IP Office?

Offering a complete solution, instead of separate products, has a huge impact on your customer’s business. It solves critical collaboration challenges, streamlines implementation and ongoing management, and reduces CAPEX and OPEX. A complete solution also makes more efficient use of your customer's IT resources, improves the productivity and efficiency of their employees, and enhances their ability to deliver better customer service. Finally a complete solution ensures the seamless integration of solution elements, and delivers faster return on investment.

A complete solution also benefits you because it expands the avenues to engage your customer. If customers want to talk about networking, you can start there. Or, if they contact you because they need to implement video collaboration or enhance BYOD security or secure networking for remote workers, it’s also possible for you to start the conversation right there.

Solution selling enhances your value to your customers. You are involved in a more integrated way with your customer´s business. You are positioning yourself as an advisor rather than just someone who is selling them IT products.

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You have reached the end of lesson 3: Selling to the Midmarket. You should now be able to identify the pain points of typical Midmarket customers and explain how the Avaya Midmarket Solution addresses them.

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Carefully read the question and click to select the correct answer or answers.

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Carefully read the question and click to select the correct answer or answers.

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Welcome to Lesson 4: Qualifying the Customer.

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At the end of this lesson: Qualifying the Customer, you should be able to ask the right questions to uncover necessary information about business issues and pain points, as well as customer-specific needs in the following areas: system and infrastructure prerequisites, redundancy and survivability options, operations and technical needs, and current and future state capabilities.

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The right solution is a little different for each customer, based on their specific needs and pain points. That is why asking the right questions to qualify each customer is important.

As mentioned, based on market studies, we can deduce some common trends and needs:

• Enable mobile and remote employees to stay connected and productive anytime, anywhere;

• Replace or acquire technology that is simple and easy to manage; and

• Minimize the risk as much as possible, all

• At a low total cost of ownership.

The Midmarket requires solutions that are easy to purchase, use, and maintain; and that have a positive impact in making the operation more efficient, as well as helping the company to grow and meet their business objectives.

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Let's take a closer look at how to qualify a customer. You may be doing this yourself, or you may find yourself supporting an account manager or a business partner. Either way, it is fundamental that based on the characteristics of the customer, we go to them with the right approach.

In the Midmarket we usually see that the buying decision is centralized. Now, Unified Communications buying decisions are typically made by a business person and an IT person. The decision is strategic, most often led by a desire to improve productivity of a distributed workforce in multiple locations. Also collaboration and mobility can be important in driving conversations.

Remember that IT buyers in Midmarket companies are likely generalists and sometimes they are far out in front of their business and executive peers in making these decisions.

Also it has been said that Midmarket buyers recognize the limitations of a limited IT staff and their executive team is risk-averse. They will often favor loyalty and simplicity over brand—and will seek advice from channel partners. They tend to favor well-integrated, easy-to-deploy solutions.

Now, going back to our bakery business case, we can identify some of these buying behaviors. For instance:

• The boss was the head of the bakery shop and the decision probably depended on him.

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• The boss mentioned that their old telephony system wasn´t keeping up and made them inefficient. They needed the correct infrastructure.

• He certainly had limited or no IT knowledge or resources and he relied on advisors that were then —along with Avaya —their trusted partners.

• Also he mentioned: “The idea then was to be able to scale… the most important thing with technology for me is simplicity. Be able to communicate.”

So, in approaching this kind of customer, you are advised to begin discussions with business buyers to better understand the requirements and challenges of the business before you explore the technical details of the solution with the IT person. Only then do we decide what to sell. The information we get from these customer resources is essential in helping us design the best solution.

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Given the nature of Midmarket buyers—and their preference for solutions rather than products—it is very important that we identify the particular challenges and pain points of each customer by getting all information we can from both business executives or IT personnel in charge of the purchasing project, so that we are able to design a solution.

Uncovering information both on the business side and the operational and technical part is relevant.

Midmarket buyers make strategic purchase decisions to solve business problems. Winning with the business buyer can help avoid tedious competitive specification comparisons with the IT buyer.

Also, it is fundamental for us to identify any specifics and needs the customer may have both on the operational and the technical side. We uncover that information by asking questions related to the system and infrastructure prerequisites, redundancy and survivability options, operations and technical needs, plus current state and future state capabilities.

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In this section you will find some questions we believe are important to ask to uncover information you need to know for each category:

• Business issues

• System and infrastructure

• Redundancy and survivability options

• Operations and technical needs

• Current state and future state capabilities

Remember, that you should direct some questions to the business executives and others to the IT manager or the person in charge of the project. Take a moment to review the questions shown in each group or category. Uncovering as much detail as you can about the objectives and challenges of the business is key to your success in selling to the Midmarket!

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Business issues

These types of questions are intended for your conversations with executive directors or business persons.

• Tell me about your business.

• What are the main challenges or problems you are facing right now?

• What are you trying to address by implementing a communications and collaboration solution?

• Do you have conferencing and inter-site meeting requirements (audio, web, and video collaboration)?

• Do you have highly specialized resources whose time is at a premium but who must communicate with customers?

• What would it cost your company to not have a communications system or to not change the one you have now?

• What are you main concerns with regard to deploying a new communications solution?

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Questions about the current system and infrastructure are better asked to the IT person.

• Some questions for information on this category are:

• What is your existing communications system like?

• What kind of communication features and components do you have currently?

• What kind of operating system do employees currently use?

• Do they use a specific email system?

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Operations and technical needs

In this category you may find questions that can be answered by the business executives and confirmed by the IT manager.

Some others, the more technical ones, are to be answered by the IT person.

• Is it a single site or multi-site company? If so, how many sites do you have?

• What are the normal hours of operation?

• How many employees are currently working at your company? Do you have any other personnel or people you interact with on a daily basis?

• Do all employees work at the company´s facilities? Do you have any mobile or home workers? How many?

• Are your employees able to collaborate effectively with business partners in different geographical areas?

• How many lines and phones do you currently have?

• Do they have incoming telephone numbers they need to preserve?

• Do they have a previous Avaya system and reduce their outlay for new hardware? (migration and virtualization)

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• If possible, how many of your existing components would you like to reuse?

• How sophisticated would you like your communications and collaboration solution to be?

Are you looking for any network security at this time?

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Many times resiliency and survivability options do not pop up instantly in conversations with the customer. If needed, you could ask questions related to these issues.

• Do you have any statutory requirements to be secure or have full resilience, such as disaster recovery or emergency services?

• How do you or how would you like to address resiliency in your communications system?

• Do you have the need for networking with international sites, and could you benefit from a “follow the sun” operation?

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Current state and future state capabilities.

• Questions in this category are usually good to ask the IT person, although some of the information might have been provided in your conversation with the business executive when you discussed future expansion.How many users do you need to support now?

• How many of them use mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, cell phones, and so on)?

• Are those employee-owned devices or does the company own them?

• If the devices are employee owned, do you want employees to also be able to use them for work communication?

• Do you want to be able to prevent staff and guests from using company network resources for social activities? (I think this means do you want to prevent them from using company network resources to social media?? Should we add “media” ?)

• Do you see the number of users increasing in the future? If yes, how many more users do you expect and how long would that take?

• Do you see your company expanding geographically, having multiple sites? If yes, how many sites might you have and when do you see this happening?

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Uncovering information will give you a better idea of the business issue your customer is trying to solve by asking for your advice.

Remember that in terms of value, clients aren’t just looking for a product and a fair price. They call you for a solution!

In terms of Solution selling then, the process of sitting down together with your customer and going through the different questions about the business issues, the customer specifics, and needs is a good idea. As part of this discussion, you might discover issues the customer was unaware of and therefore open opportunities to sell even more!

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You´ve completed Lesson 4: Qualifying the Customer. Let´s recap briefly what we´ve gone through in this lesson.

• It is relevant to identify pain points and typical buying behavior, as well as the specific approach and selling motion needed for selling to the Midmarket.

• We recognize some typical customer needs within the Midmarket.

• To enable mobile or remote employees to stay connected and productive,

• To replace or acquire technology that is simple and easy to manage,

• To minimize risk as much as possible, and

• To maintain low total cost of ownership.

• To qualify a customer in the midmarket, we recognize their specific needs, by asking questions to uncover the information we need to make the correct move and offer the right solution.

• We ask questions both on the business side and the operational and technical side to uncover information related to business issues and pain points, system and infrastructure prerequisites, redundancy and survivability options, operations and technical needs, and current state and future state capabilities.

We have compiled the most helpful questions into a Cheat Sheet for you. Download it via

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the resources menu on the top right.

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Carefully read the question and click to select the correct answer or answers.

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Drag each of the questions from right to left to match the correct category.

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Carefully read the question and click to select the correct answer or answers.

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Welcome to Lesson 5: Winning in the Market.

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At the end of this lesson, you should be able to identify and contrast the top differentiators of the Avaya Midmarket Solution versus select competitors’ offerings, identify the principal competitors, and describe Avaya solution differentiators. Also, you should be able to name the most common customer objections and describe how to overcome those objections.

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For Avaya products or solutions, there are far too many competitors to cover each one individually. Each country has a unique set of competitors to Avaya, and those competitors vary greatly based on cost, availability, localization, and so on. Some are just replacing dial tone, while others strive to do everything collaborative.

For now, and as we are talking about a complete solution for Midmarket based on the IP Office platform and not stand-alone products, we will use Avaya's most predominate competitors as an example of determining how to combat competitors. Please make sure you visit the competitive section of the sales and partner portal for up to date information on other competitors.

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When comparing the Avaya solution to the Cisco offering, in summary we can say that:

• The Avaya solution typically costs less money and provides the same or better capabilities.

• Whether you need an appliance, standard server, virtualization, or a mix of all three, the flexibility of the Avaya solution gives you the ability to use any or all deployment options, depending on the customer´s needs.

• Customers that have existing Avaya, BCM, or Norstar digital phones can reuse them and save significant money in the process. In addition, the savings from not having to rewire can make the savings even greater.

• The entire Avaya solution architecture is designed to grow as the business grows, without the need to discard existing equipment, to minimize any cost and disruption.

• Customers deploying Fabric with IP Office enjoy increasing operational simplicity. They can configure the switch with just one command, as well as simplify the ongoing adds, moves, and changes needed.

• While Avaya gear works best together, each part is fully standards-compliant. Because Avaya solutions are based on open standards, our partners can still sell the parts that the customer is asking for, even if they are not manufactured by Avaya.

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When comparing the Avaya solution to the ShoreTel offering and taking a solution approach to customer needs, Avaya stands up against this competitor for the following reasons:

• With Avaya, the mobile experience for employees is richer and will increase their productivity by allowing them to locate and communicate with co-workers anywhere, anytime.

• Networking integration is easier.

• Avaya provides a complete video collaboration solution with point-to-point and point-to-multipoint video calls that is simple, secure, and affordable.

• With over 300 partners, the Avaya DevConnect Program helps customers leverage the use of several business applications such as Microsoft Outlook.

• For communications infrastructure to be always on, an architecture that can be configured to provide full resiliency for all users at all locations, without additional hardware is essential to a Midmarket customer.

• Avaya provides a complete and integrated collaboration portfolio to help minimize compatibility issues, accelerate time to market, and reduce support cost.

• Finally, but very important, the Avaya IP Office solution offers 32% lower total cost of ownership and the option of migrating at the customer’s pace with hybrid solutions.

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Spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt, short FUD [fud], is a weapon used by the competition to place doubt in the mind of a potential customer. You customer may come up with objections based on this at any time during your conversation. Here are some common FUD-infused objections and tips on how to handle such situations.

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Customer objection:

Deploying a UC solution is risky and expensive.

I’m not sure we have the time, resources, and training to mitigate the risks.

How can you handle this objection?

Avaya IP Office is a proven solution with more than 400,000 systems deployed worldwide. It’s been designed to be easy to use and straightforward to deploy. All of the components have been pretested to help ensure the overall success of an integrated Avaya solution.

Forrester Research has reported that “UC rollouts typically reduce carrier communications expenses by 30 to 40 percent and save 10 to 15 percent on trunking costs,” and that is before considering additional savings in travel and other soft costs. Your investment in an Avaya collaboration solution should quickly pay for itself.

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Customer objection:

Your contact center and web conferencing solutions are incomplete.

How can you handle this objection?

Avaya offers a comprehensive solution for Midmarket that includes Web Conference as an integrated piece for IP Office. It allows the user to enter the specific dial in information such as the DID extension to access a conference; it offers the easiest way for either a Web Collaboration moderator or participant to access a Web Collaboration session. Plus, the Administrator can monitor all the live Web Conferences on the system and see a list of the participants for each web collaboration session.

On the other hand, Contact center solutions are designed specifically for small and midsize businesses to allow them enhance Customer Experience. Avaya IP Office Contact Center and Customer Engagement On Avaya by Google Cloud platform, are both optimized for use with IP Office software. These solutions enable blended multichannel capabilities such as voice, email, web chat, SMS text, and fax. Those capabilities help improve customer experiences to increase revenue and customer lifetime value while improving agent efficiency to reduce costs.

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Customer objection:

Your solution lacks tight integration with Active Directory.

How can you handle this objection?

Integration with Active Directory is useful when adding or deleting a user, and the current release of IP Office Server Edition provides a way to integrate it. With IP Office Server, data can be exported from Active Directory using the LDAP standard and then imported into IP Office.”

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Customer objection:

I ve heard your solution is difficult to scale.

How can you handle this objection?

Actually, scaling an Avaya IP Office solution is very simple. IP Office can support up to 3000 users and up to 150 sites with IP Office Select with as few as three servers. Software—including a contact center solution—can be deployed in virtualized environments. IP Office Web Manager provides a single, holistic view of the entire deployment.

It requires only a simple license to add agents, making it easy and cost effective to grow your contact center population. In addition, IP Office contact center solutions use concurrent agent licensing, so you’re licensed for the number of agents logged on— not for your individual agents.

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Customer objection:

I can’t afford to rewire and throw out all of my existing phones. How does your solution work with my existing infrastructure?

How can you handle this objection?

Avaya IP Office is unique in its ability to support hybrid deployments: analog, digital, and IP phones. In fact, IP Office supports a broader range of endpoints than any other UC solution for Midmarket companies. Softclients can provide PC-based UC functionality where analog or digital phones are deployed.

Moreover, with an Avaya Solution, you are maximizing your ROI, while improving productivity and efficiency.

For instance, the Avaya Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture Fabric solution enhances productivity by optimizing the way that networks are deployed, implemented, operated, and maintained. It’s based on the Shortest Path Bridging or SBP technology to boost the reliability, manageability, and bandwidth of the network. Fabric and SPB ensure that traffic always takes the path with the least latency and highest bandwidth, optimizing application performance.

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Customer objection:

My customers aren’t telling me they want to use different communication channels to do business with us—so why should I change?

How can you handle this objection?

They may not be telling you, but the fact is that more and more customers want to communicate with you not only by way of voice, but also by way of email, voice, web chat, and SMS. A recent Avaya survey found that 78 percent of consumers asked said they wanted to be able to communicate with companies using multiple channels.

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Customer objection:

My contact center agents are used to taking just voice calls. I can’t afford the time to train them on a multichannel solution!

How can you handle this objection?

Avaya makes it easy for agents to adapt to other channels such as web chat and email. Each agent has their own customized desktop with intuitive telephony and multichannel controls. It’s very easy to navigate between the different channels. Training is typically fast and effective.

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In the end, Avaya is a leading global provider of next-generation business collaboration and communications solutions, providing UC, real-time video collaboration, contact center, networking, and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. Avaya has number-one market share globally with 30.5 percent.

Avaya helps customers bring people together with the right information at the right time in the right context, enabling business users to improve their efficiency and quickly solve critical business challenges. Because Avaya solutions are based on open standards, our customers can decide what works best for them. Our objective is to give people the best collaboration and contact center experiences possible—regardless of the devices, locations, or media they choose.

So, why can we win with the Avaya Midmarket Solution?

• It is a proven solution.

• It provides a rich work-from-anywhere experience.

• Any network integration is painless.

• It has strong remote endpoint and network security.

• It integrates affordable video collaboration.

• It gives customers more for their money—a full collaboration solution with the best TCO.

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This is the end of Lesson 5: Winning in the Market. In this lesson, we examined the competitive landscape, Avaya Solution differentiators, and common customer objections.

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Carefully read the question and click to select the correct answer or answers.

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Carefully read the question and click to select the correct answer or answers

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In addition to this overview course for the Avaya Midmarket Solution, there are many resources you can find online to learn more about Midmarket and the Avaya Solution for customers within this market. We’ll tell you about those resources in this section. Also, we´ll recap the main topics covered during this course.

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For more information, visit the Sales Portal, and bookmark the IP Office product page so that you can access it easily in the future. From here, you can access everything you need to learn about Midmarket products and solutions, and how to position them with your customers.

In particular, you will want to check out the Sales toolkit. The site is continually updated, so we encourage you to check back frequently to get the latest information.

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In addition to the resources already mentioned, this list contains links to all the Product Information Documents linked to from this Overview course, so you can go back to them for a deeper understanding of each product. Remember that these materials contain information that is important to know for the APDS online test.

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In addition to the resources already mentioned, this list contains links to all the Product Information Documents linked to from this Overview course, so you can go back to them for a deeper understanding of each product. Remember that these materials contain information that is important to know for the APDS online test.

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To summarize, in this overview of the Avaya Midmarket Solution you learned about:

Market trends and Midmarket customer drivers,

Products and solution areas within the Avaya Midmarket Portfolio and their technical attributes or capabilities,

Typical customer issues and needs,

The competition landscape, and

Typical FUD and how to overcome potential customer objections.

Thank you for your time and attention to this course. Please close this window to exit the course.

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