Avaya Inc., a global provider of business communications applications, systems and services, has announced the achievement of significant growth in the number of end users it supports within mid-sized companies throughout the world.
These numbers are based on an independent report from Canalys, which revealed that Avaya added seven million mid-market end users across the globe in the last three years. To provide visualization for this number, it is roughly the equivalent to the population of the City of London.
Canalys’ report, the Unified Communications Call Control (Q2 2007), specializes in delivering market data, analysis and advice to the world’s technology vendors.
Avaya users between 2005 and 2007 were tracked by Canalys to complete its evaluation. The Avaya portfolio of mid-sized businesses includes such solutions as Unified Communications solutions and customer service applications.
Ohio-based Progressive Medical Inc., a cost containment company providing pharmacy benefit management, medical equipment and ancillary healthcare services to the workers’ compensation, auto no-fault and personal injury protection industries, has been using Avaya solutions to improve customer service and productivity.
The company has 380 employees and provides services and support to clients and injured parties nationwide. Progressive medical operates a contact center at headquarters and a pharmacy home-delivery service a short distance away. As a result, the company needed a mobility solution to integrate mobile phones with desk phones and eliminate the need for an in-house wireless network.
"Our facilities manager relies on Avaya Extension to Cellular to receive calls wherever he's working in the building," said Rick Dosky, Supervisor, Technical Services, Progressive Medical, in a Monday statement.
"If the alarm company calls his office to report an alert and he needs to investigate the cause, he can simply take the call with him by moving it to his cell phone."
Avaya’s Extension to Cellular allows calls and business phone features such as “hold” and “conferencing” to be accessed by a user’s mobile phone. Now, Progressive Medical’s IT Technical Services employees spend less time at their desks answering calls and more time providing hands-on troubleshooting services to co-workers.
Pharmacists are able to receive calls made to their desk extension while assisting the company’s contact center agents; executives now have a mobility solution that enables them to be reached directly while out of the office; and the company’s facility manager can be reached at any time, and anywhere.
"Mid-sized businesses have similar communications needs as their large business counterparts. They want to integrate their voice systems with collaboration tools, critical business process and applications in order to achieve efficient communication between their employees across the company, including headquarters, branch office and remote workers," said Maria Carolina Guedes Smith, New York City-based senior consultant, AMI Partners, in Monday’s statement.
"Because mid-sized businesses have budget and skilled IT staff constraints, they need cost-effective and easy-to-use solutions. Avaya's strength in IP
telephony, unified communications and contact center applications, combined with a broad presence in small and medium business (SMB) and enterprise markets, ensure that the company is well positioned to address these firms' requirements."
Jorge Blanco, vice president, solutions marketing, Avaya, said that mid- sized businesses are driven to manage costs while increasing employee productivity and growing their customer base.
"Clearly, adding seven million customers over the last three years to our existing customer base is a significant milestone for Avaya. It solidifies Avaya's leadership position in the mid-market and positions it well for the future as the company increases its focus on this market segment."
Avaya has certainly proven itself to be a formidable player in the mid-sized market throughout the world, not to mention its success with large enterprises and even small businesses.
The company’s success lies in its knowledge of the challenges of the market, and its ability to provide solutions that meet these challenges, while also catering to the specific needs of the company. In doing so, time and again, Avaya continues to drive its own demand and dominate the market.
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Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
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