Avaya Speeds Quoting, Ordering for Partners

By Khali Henderson

Avaya Inc. announced Monday the global rollout of Avaya One Source, an initiative for Avaya Connect partners and distributors that speeds and simplifies access to the companys portfolio of UC, contact center and networking solutions.

Avaya One Source speeds quoting and ordering of all Avaya solutions through more efficient pricing, processes and tools. New automation capabilities, real-time access to standardized pricing, and an integrated and centralized Web-based system significantly reduce order cycle times, enabling channel partners to deliver quicker responses to customers.

Avaya also has simplified global pricing and discounting, reducing 1,400 Avaya material price groups to 13 and combining more than 200 separate pricing catalogs into one. Standardized global pricing and discounting including graduated discounting based on partner level helps ensure pricing consistency and clarity across every region.

Avaya One Source already is deployed in key regions throughout the world, with full deployment planned for all countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia Pacific by July; availability for the U.S., Canada and CALA region is slated for fourth quarter.

Avaya One Source consolidates access to all catalogs and pricing files, quote tools and special pricing requests as well as the ability to securely place and view orders into a single, password-protected site.

The  integrated quoting and ordering system unifies all solution pricing within a single Web-based location, equipped with electronic ordering and shopping carts. Plus it offers new automation capabilities to deliver more accurate, real-time pricing in minutes.

Partners can also share quotes with distributors via the Web, and have VPN-less access to quotes and ordering for a speedier, more productive quote-to-order process.

A spokesperson for Avaya explained the difference that One Source will make for partners by comparing it to past procedures:

“Today an Avaya sales engineer who wishes to configure a solution that includes Heritage Nortel and Avaya components must utilize separate tools and price models.  A perfect example of this would be the current Collaboration Pack  that allows integration of the CS1000 Release 7.5 into the Aura environment so that CS1000 users may use some of the collaborative applications with Aura via Session Manager. Add Radvision into this environment and another level of design complexity is put into the mix. 

“The sales engineer would use:

“Thats a minimum of three tools, each with a different login process and password; some are tethered via VPN and others requiring large monthly file downloads.  Each of these configuration tools pulls pricing from a different price list, and since we currently have more than 200 price lists and 1,400 discounts, the pricing for each component can vary substantially based on geography, partner type and product. 

“And although the customer sees this as one solution, the separate quotes cannot be combined when ordering or tracking, and each follows a separate special bid process if required.”

In contrast, using One Source streamlines the quoting, ordering and tracking process:

“OneSource will consolidate many of the above tools into a single web interface and make it possible for the same engineer to use a single password to access all of these tools via the web. Say goodbye to the VPN, large file downloads, and multiple log ins.  And the best advantage: all quotes will be created in the same price structure with the same standard discount structure, so the quotes can be combined, copied, shared and ordered thru a single online tool. 

“Because all of our products and services will use a common price structure, Avaya can now publish one real time price catalog that is always up to date and available online. That means [partners] can immediately identify [their] cost, making it possible to create customer pricing in hours instead of weeks.”