Companies
Written by Alma Anonas-Carpio / Correspondent
Sunday, 17 May 2009 20:17

ENTERPRISE communications firm Avaya has embarked on a major effort to improve Avaya Global Services (AGS) in the Asia-Pacific region to enhance the suite of services and value to customers as part of a global objective to grow the services business.

The improvements in the AGS are meant to help Avaya customers reduce costs by centralizing their infrastructure and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their employees. Operations services are also being optimized to cater to and manage complex communications environments and tighter customer guidelines. AGS is also revising its support and maintenance services model to become more cost-effective.

AGS is involved in designing, integrating, supporting and managing solutions for Avaya and is composed of Avaya’s Professional Services, Operations Services and Global Support Services. The Global Support Services are among the key valued services enjoyed by Avaya customers and channel partners, but the company is also looking at working with existing and new partners to enhance the range of services and launch a full suite of upgraded services as well.

AGS Asia-Pacific head Chris Cheng laid out his strategy to grow the services business in Asia-Pacific thus: “If you want to sell technology to customers today, you need to be prepared to substantiate it with measurable returns. At Avaya Global Services, we have the ability to analyze every nook and cranny of any communication system, understand what’s needed to improve it, implement that in the most cost-effective way and go on to manage that system for you. Without adding value, we should not even be in this business.”

To add value for customers, Avaya set up Centers of Excellence at Pune and Hyderabad in India to help the company understand the needs of business users by specific industry verticals, and to develop Avaya solutions based on these findings. Another center was set up in Dalian, China, which continues to grow as the firm sustains its support for functions and services to this site.

Avaya Professional Services in the Asia-Pacific is now being aligned with these centers of excellence. In catering to the hospitality industry, for example, AGS tailored specific solutions that include call accounting and property management interfaces, personal digital assistant (PDA) solutions for staff or the hotel call center system. The centers analyze the best practices across given industries and apply these findings to offer cost-competitive and high-value solutions to its customers.

AGS is leveraging its industry expertise and experience to develop integrated applications that add direct value to its customers. One application that does this is AgentMap, which can be integrated into Avaya’s existing contact center solutions. This application provides the contact center supervisors with a customizable seat-layout view of agents’ real-time status using color codes, icons and labels.

Avaya has also applied some major changes, such as adopting a channel strategy that ensures consistency in delivering a high level of service to all its customers. Following this line, AGS will increase collaboration with its channel partners to ensure they have the right tools, intelligence and programs to offer to their customers and ensure consistency in their service delivery. This offers AGS channel partner an opportunity to grow their business capabilities and exposure. The AGS strategy here is to work with system integrators as well as service providers to ensure that customers get the optimum solution.

AGS will also extend its expertise to provide consulting and professional services to clients using the Avaya Aura and Intelligent Customer Routing (ICR) services in the Asia-Pacific. Avaya Aura is a new Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based communications architecture that integrates communications across multivendor, multilocation and multimodal businesses using an open platform. Avaya ICR is Avaya’s new contact center solution based on an open platform. It is designed to help businesses enhance their customer experience while improving efficiency and cost savings in their contact center operations.

The services AGS offers to Avaya customers begin with a situation assessment of the client’s communications infrastructure and continues through to the actual design, integration and subsequent management of a revamped system tailor-fit to the client’s needs. This ability to provide Avaya Aura and Avaya ICR as a service is meant to enable Avaya customers to minimize their risks, ensure a low total cost of ownership (TCO) and maximize their return on investment (ROI).

* Published in BusinessMirror