CoreDial on Tuesday unveiled its new CoreNexa Contact Center Certification Program, a training suite that allows the company’s partners to independently sell and deploy its contact center platform.

The program includes extensive training on product, and how to sell, configure and support customer solutions. Certification is optional for qualifying CoreDial partners and there is no fee to enroll.

Ken Lienemann, CoreDial’s chief revenue officer, tells Channel Partners his company came to market with its contact center about a year ago and “we really wanted to do with CC what we had done with UC, and that was to equip the channel to be entirely independent of us.”

CoreDial’s Ken Lienemann

“Each month we walk in and there’s thousands of seats of UC that have been sold and the channel partners don’t have to reach out to us for anything because the platform we provide not only provides the call control, but it does everything they need to run the business,” he said. “We want to do the same thing for CC … so we have rapid time to deploy and low cost with all the feature-rich capabilities that the SME requires. And this certification program for the right partner enables them to go off and do all those things on their own and not have to rely on us while maintaining the integrity of the program. So they sign the customer and they do it under their own brand, and they deliver all the services in order to enrich the solution to the end customer.”

The program is designed for select CoreDial partners who have demonstrated the requisite technical proficiency and resources to succeed in selling contact center solutions. It allows them to autonomously pursue deals, have full control of their customer experiences, and earn more revenue and higher margins in the process, according to CoreDial.

The CoreNexa omnichannel CCaaS solution incorporates voice, live web chat, text, email, interactive voice response (IVR), presence management and customer relationship management (CRM) integration. It can be integrated into existing CoreDial deployments as well as third-party environments, allowing MSPs to target customers and opportunities beyond CoreDial’s existing UCaaS base.

In addition to the new program, CoreDial offers partners a contact center deal registration program that includes dedicated sales and marketing support to any partner who needs CoreDial’s assistance to pursue and win deals. This program also provides partners with professional services, providing configuration and integration services in support of tailored customer solutions. The program is available to both certified and non-certified partners.

“We think it’s a really fast path to the customer and it also opens up doors for our channel that previously didn’t exist in the form of our solution is over the top, so it plugs in not only to our call control, but to others,” Lienemann said. “So these channel partners might walk into a situation and say, ‘Wow, I’ve got to displace the incumbent phone provider; that’s a tough task.’ Now they can go in and …

… they can identify opportunities to sell them CC and be able to bolt into that incumbent provider and then over time displace them with their UC solution. So they not only sell them the CC, but over time they end up selling them UC. So we’re definitely seeing that drag effect occur and the ability for these channel partners to enter deals in ways that they couldn’t before.”

“Just as we’ve proven out a strategy and business model that enables the channel’s success with cloud communications using our CoreNexa UCaaS platform, CoreNexa Contact Center provides a compelling platform our partners can quickly take to market, creating significant value for customers while reinforcing their role as essential IT advisers,” said Alan Rihm, CoreDial’s CEO. “The certification program delivers vital sales qualification and technical implementation training that empowers partners to pursue a range of opportunities, enter new markets and differentiate their brands in a hypercompetitive environment. We’re confident this initiative will transform the CCaaS space and translate to accelerated sales, more revenue, higher margins, and even stickier customer relationships for our partners.”

CoreDial has about 900 partners serving more than 27,000 businesses and more than 330,000 seats nationwide,