Avaya Inc., together with Avaya Financial Services, is offering its BusinessPartners and its direct sales team, its New Wave, low-interest financing program as a way to open up new customer and revenue opportunities across businesses and markets.
The program, which offers businesses zero per cent and 2.99 per cent financing options, was initially launched in the U.S. at the beginning of this year and was made available to Canada in early February, said Paul Cioci, regional manager of Avaya Financial Services in Canada. The New Wave program is only available with credit approval up until June 30, 2008, Cioci said. Avaya’s overall business objective is to attract more new end-user customers through channel partners who are taking advantage of this program.
Jeff Wiener, president of Toronto-based Digitcom Canada Inc., an Avaya partner for the past three years and also a participant in the New Wave program, said the low-cost financing options have enabled his company to better service its Canadian SMB customers when it comes to Avaya’s IP Office solutions.
“If a manufacturer’s willing to stand behind us for financing,” Wiener said, “it helps to drive our business a little more because we can gain the competitive advantage when it comes to price points and it also helps tip the product in Avaya’s favour,” he added.
“There are four product mixes that are eligible for New Wave,” Cioci said. “IP Office 500, Communication Manager, MultiVantage Express and Distributed Office. We’re expecting to see more activity in the SMB market now that this program is available,” he added.
By taking part in the New Wave program, Wiener says Digitcom Canada has seen the majority of its customer and revenue opportunities come from areas such as legal, professional services and manufacturing sectors.
Amir Hameed, director of applications sales at Avaya Canada, said the creation of New Wave stems from the idea of making unified communications (UC) more readily available to the masses across businesses of all sizes. To help sweeten the deal and to make Avaya solutions even more attractive to customers, Hameed says, New Wave can also be combined with other discount offerings and promotional offers from Avaya.
“We’re offering to Avaya customers and BusinessPartners a 36-month finance lease of just 2.99 per cent, or a fair market value true lease of zero per cent,” Cioci adds. “Our intention with New Wave is to make our UC offerings more attractive to our partners and customers because many customers, especially in the SMB space think UC solutions are just for the enterprise.”
Steve Bielawski, vice-president of channels at Avaya Canada, said while the program is available to all of Avaya’s certified BusinessPartners, he said the ones who focus on the SMB market are the ones in particular that Avaya hopes to attract more of.
“The availability of New Wave is another sales tool that our partners have to help their customers acquire new Avaya services and solutions,” Bielawski said. “It’s a way to help our partners close more deals and increase their revenue streams.”
