Shorten pushes Avaya upwards

Shorten: My predecessors partially deployed the channel-centricity strategy but I am going to drive that harder

Avaya's new UK chief is aiming to ramp up business with the communications vendor's top 20 UK partners and encourage sales teams to adopt a greater vertical focus.

Lee Shorten became UK and Ireland managing director in April as part of a reshuffle which saw the countries reclassified into a single sales territory. He revealed that Avaya currently did more than 75 per cent of its UK business indirectly.

He claimed that he wanted to increase that percentage to more than 80 over the coming year and, ultimately, above 90 per cent.

"My predecessors partially deployed the channel-centricity strategy but I am going to drive that harder," he said.

"The other thing is to get the sales guys much more industry-focused. We have a lot of general technology people who need to move towards a more business-savvy conversation."

Avaya has about 100 registered UK partners and Shorten claimed this number was enough. He said his priorities were to increase business volumes with the top 20 and encourage collaboration between resellers.

Steve Walker, managing director of Platinum partner IP Integration, said: " Avaya is getting more channel-centric and we have seen a trickle of sales enquiries which may have gone direct before. But a lot of activity is around courting the big telcos.

Martin Hill-Wilson, strategy director for Platinum partner Datapoint, said: "There has been an increasing recognition that they need to work through the channel."