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SMEs must take advantage of Unified Communications: Roy Wakim
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Saurabh Gupta | 04 Apr, 2011
Unified Communications (UC) is a technology that can help small and medium
enterprises (SMEs) in a way to reduce expenses and improve productivity, says
Roy Wakim, Director, SME Communications, Avaya APAC in an exclusive interview to
SME Times.
Excerpts of the interview...
Please tell our readers more about Avaya Inc?
Roy Wakim: Avaya provides unified communications, contact centers, data solutions,
and related services. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for
state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer
service and competitiveness. We offer our entire range of solutions in India.
For SMEs, our IP Office portfolio offers small businesses a scalable,
state-of-the-art solution for telephony, messaging, networking, conferencing,
customer management, and unified communications.
Avaya IP Office is a
highly modular IP telephone system designed to meet the needs of home offices,
standalone businesses, and networked branch and head offices for small and
medium businesses. IP Office gives growing companies a complete solution for
telephony, messaging, networking, conferencing, customer management, and unified
communications.
IP Office is a versatile communications solution that
combines the reliability and ease of a traditional telephony system with the
applications and advantages of an IP telephony solution. This converged
communications solution can help businesses reduce costs, increase productivity,
and improve customer service.
At Avaya, our guiding principle is that
customers should be supported in migrating to IP telephony at their own pace,
following their own path. Our clients can use a mix of digital, analog, and IP
technology and still take advantage of all the applications that convergence
provides.
IP Office addresses basic telephony needs, leverages built-in
convergence capabilities, and capitalizes on robust unified applications to
deliver intelligent communications to your users and customers. This small
office IP phone system simplifies processes, and streamlines the information
exchange within systems to create simple and effective communication
experiences.
- Investment protection: The IP Office solution offers
scalability to meet almost every future need of the business
For large
enterprises our unified communications solutions is Avaya Aura⢠platform, which
easily integrates communications across multi-vendor, multi-modal and
multi-location businesses. In the contact center space, our Communication
Manager portfolio has helped us to a market leading position, and there is
exciting innovation in the contact center arena as the next generation of
context-based interactions will enhance customer service levels still further.
We have a strong data portfolio, with recently announced innovation in WLAN,
Ethernet routing switches and advanced gateways helping reinforce our
credentials for providing efficient, resilient, high-performance
networks.
In what ways can your system help Small and Medium Business
(SMBs)? Roy Wakim: Avaya IP Office offers small businesses a scalable,
state-of-the-art solution for telephony, messaging, networking, conferencing,
customer management, and unified communications. Avayaâs IP Office helps deliver
the following results:
- Connectivity and reliability: With personal
extensions, transfer capability, paging, and auto attendant for after-hours,
employees can receive calls more quickly and efficiently. They can access
messages either by phone or by computer. The system has proven to be highly
reliable, with virtually no outages or downtime
- Enhanced user
satisfaction and productivity: Employees experience greater productivity with
more efficient tools for serving their customers. They are no longer frustrated
by lost or garbled messages retrieved from the answering machine, and they
appreciate being able to prioritize calls on their PCs. The off-hours duty
person can screen calls
- Outstanding customer service: Customers reach
company personnel quickly and receive answers to their inquiries in expedited
fashion. All calls are answered in person during business hours. During
after-hours, routine messages are recorded in individual voicemail boxes, rather
than on a message machine that serves the whole company; emergency calls are
routed directly to the on-call person. These enhancements help the company to
deliver on their promise of superior customer service 24/7, which is essential
for gaining new business and retaining customers
What is Unified
communications? How can this technology help SMBs? Roy Wakim: Avaya defines Unified
Communications as orchestrated communication and collaboration across locations,
time, and medium to accelerate business results. Global economic slowdown has
changed the face of how organisations are communicating now. CIOs have started
following one golden rule: âDo more with less.â With its ability to reduce
expenses and simultaneously improve productivity, Unified Communications tools
became the obvious option. Today,
even as the economy is gradually bouncing back to normalcy, Indian enterprises
are now moving beyond basic communications and have made UC an integral part of
their communication processes. These communications services are increasingly
designed to be embedded into structured and unstructured business
processes.
UC can benefit almost any enterprise, regardless of size. But
because SMEs have less wiggle room to squander resources compared to larger
companies, the technology can make a lot of sense for smaller enterprises. In
the name of âproductivity,â for example, many SME employees often have several
different roles and less support compared to employees at larger companies who
might have more narrowly defined job descriptions SMEs. In the SME businesses,
people tend to wear many âhatsâ. Also, given the fact, penetration of IT is very
low, which gives a huge opportunity to enterprise communications systems
provider like Avaya to reach out to the SMEs and provide right solutions and
ensure better ROIs for them.
From your market research, how do you see
the SMB market in India? Roy Wakim: According to a recent survey, the number of
micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in India currently stands at 26
million. SMEs in India provide employment to 75% of the countryâs workforce and
contribute to more than 40% of the total Industrial output, 35% of which is
exported. India has the second largest population of small and medium businesses
(SMBs) among BRIC countries and the US.
Looking at the current trends, IP
based systems like SIP, IP PBX and telephony systems are gaining ground. Vendors
are putting in a lot of research and development into this area and aggressively
launching various products to suit market needs. Different vendors adopt
different approaches. Some utilize certain software that enables employees to
remain connected and share information with peers using e-mail, instant message
and video conferencing in an easier and cost effective manner. Others offer
IP-based features including IP telephony on a local wireless network, PC-based
attendant console, IP network interface, and screen-based operator. Avaya offers
a range of products, some of which are specifically tailored to SME needs, such
as Avaya IP Office, which is explained ahead.
What kind of challenges
SMBs usually face in IT and ITeS integration in India? Roy Wakim: SMEs face several
challenges from capital to markets to people, from selection of appropriate
technology for business to knowledge and access to new technology with adequate
financial aid and stay in sync with the changing trends.
SMEs are an
important market for Avaya and our solutions are well suited to address the
issues faced by this segment. The biggest challenge that SMEs face is of lack of
finance, difficulty in attracting the right talent and the inability to
differentiate between investment and an expense when it comes to technology
adoption.
Liquidity is a major challenge for SMBs. How cost-efficient are
your products? Roy Wakim: IP Office opens the door to a wide range of options for
better managing your companyâs mobile phone and long-distance charges by routing
calls through the system and over broadband links. Save on calling costs when
traveling â with just your laptop, headset and Internet connection, Power Users
have everything they need to make and receive calls and reduce or eliminate
calling costs when traveling.
Handle more calls with fewer people:
Instead of using staff time to answer incoming calls, rely on the built-in
intelligence in IP Office to route calls quickly and accurately.
Expand
your talent pool without increasing real estate: Is your business growing, but
you donât want to add full-time staff? With IP Office you have the flexibility
to have extra staff working from homeâwherever that may be. Each would have
access to all the communications and call handling capabilities your other
employees have at the main office.
Eliminate conference calling fees: IP
Office makes every day conferencing affordable and practical by providing your
business with 128 party conference capacity; up to 64 parties on a single
call.
Centralize administration: For businesses with more than one
location, IP Office enables remote management and administration from a central
location. No need to have an administrator at every site.
What does the
government need to do to make SMBs more IT efficient? Your comments on this.
Roy Wakim: The government needs to look at programs that allow SME to invest in
technology. By providing Technology refresh loans and/or tax breaks it will
allow SME to reinvest in their business to become more efficient. Technology
allows SME to become efficient.
Last but not least, your message to SMBs?
Roy Wakim: Avaya Small and Medium Enterprise Communications business unit is
focused on designing, building and marketing complete communications systems for
organizations with up to 250 employees.
From easy-to-use stand-alone
systems to sophisticated and integrated multi-site solutions, Avaya helps SMEs
increase the productivity of their employees, deliver superior customer service,
and reduce costs. Together with thousands of certified partners in virtually
every part of the world, Avaya delivers the full breadth of solutions and
services that todayâs SMEs
require.
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SME focused ICT Channel Partner in India
Saleem Azad | Fri Nov 25 06:20:08 2011
Dear Mr. Wakim,
CyberMedia Research(CMR)(www.cmrindia.com) has a SME focused ICT Channel Partner study across 40 Indian cities. This study provides a thorough insights on the variegated channel partner ecosystem covering more than 40 Indian cities. I think Avaya must take advantage of our channel partner study...This will certainly help to capture the 6th largest economy, India with a US$100 million SME market potential.
Saleem Azad
Assistant Manager - Sales & Marketing - South India
CMR Ltd
sazad@cmrindia.com
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