Avaya tosses 400 UK resellers overboard

Swim, channel men, SWIM

Biz comms Avaya has made good on its promise to toss 400 bit-part channel partners overboard, and claims to have cut the cost and complexity of training as it looks to rebuild part of the base.

As exclusively revealed by The Channel back in July, Avaya UK chief Simon Culmer said the firm was going to axe half of its 800-strong dealer network - cutting those which were only tactical sellers and didn't have up-to-date accreditations.

"We have trimmed back on partners, ones that did less than $5,000 a year with us, we decided to not renew those relationships," the big dog told us.

This leaves a circa $800,000 sales hole and Avaya is looking to hoist another 90-odd reseller partners into the fold via the stupidly named Recruit, On board, Authorise, Develop and Sustain (ROADS) programme.

This is a global process for distributors - Westcon, Scan Source and Avnet in the UK - to get partners on board as quickly and efficiently as possible.

With this in mind, Culmer said Avaya had created the Learning Virtual Campus, based in AvayaLive Engage, similar to SecondLife where partners can log on to sit courses and accredit themselves in around 60 days.

He said this speeds up the process and makes it much cheaper once travel and accommodation costs are tallied up.

Distributors will get $3,000 for each SME, networking or video partner that takes training and hits a revenue goal in the first 12 months.

In other news, Avaya has made Mark Cook, Mike Pook and Paul Heath sales director for enterprise, financial services and the public sector respectively. ®