Kathy Gibson reports from Gitex – Avaya has successfully emerged from bankruptcy to challenge for supremacy in the burgeoning customer experience market.
The company entered Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code in February this year, and emerged less than three months later, in May, with a very positive financial story to tell. This doesn’t mean its movements are shrouded in secrecy, though. “I like the transparency of being public,” Masarek says. “But our constituent is not Wall Street; it is our customers. So we do an annual report for our customers that brings the new company to life and lets us communicate with a level of transparency.
This is key, says Masarek: Avaya has traditionally reported good revenues, but profitability was lacking. Now, not only has it restored free cash flow but turns in a positive performance. “These are large deployments,” Masarek points out. “And that customer set is modernising operations and moving to the cloud – but not like the SME world is. Theirs’ is much more of a gradual migration. So our go-to-market strategy of innovation without disruption is key.”
The Avaya Experience Platform helps organisations to maximise contact centre performance and connect to customers with seamless experiences across channels including voice, video, chat, messaging, and more. With very little competition in the on-premise space, Masarek believes Avaya has a good story to tell in helping the large, complex and sensitive industries customer set to transition to hybrid and full cloud when they are ready to do so.