Strategic Partner Stew

Today it occurred to me that some of Avaya’s strongest value propositions require partners to have competencies or expertise that are just out of reach to most of us. Avaya can do some really cool things but in order to do some of these things, you need to be more than an Avaya partner. So here’s food for thought. What types of partnerships might you forge to capitalize on Avaya’s most advanced, margin rich solutions? Partners tell me all the time that partnering doesn’t work and I realize this is all easy on paper but much harder in practice. I think it’s worth it if you can figure some of these out.

CEBP – Communication Enabled Business Processes. In order for this to work, you have to integrate unified communications into Business Process Management. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a single Avaya partner with expertise in this area. Below are some good organizations to explore to strike up partnerships.

• www.bpminstitute.org.
• http://bpmmag.net
• www.bpmi.org
• www.bpm.org
• www.intelligententerprise.com

Business Continuity/ Disaster Recovery/ Emergency Preparedness

• www.drii.org
• www.ready.gov
• www.idra.com
• www.brma.com
• www.nyu.edu/intercep

MACCS- Mobile Access for Converged Communications (Healthcare) launching next month!

• http://www.himss.org/ASP/chaptersHome.asp
• http://medsphere.org

The goal is to find organizations that are selling into these spaces but aren’t selling a complete solution because they aren’t addressing the voice piece (and arguably the human element.) With all of the above, it makes sense to see what communities exist in facebook and LinkedIn.

Good Selling,

Tom