EVENTS Channel Live 2019
“For us, this is an opportunity to bring this new brand to life so our partners can see it, feel it, touch it and it has
worked really well for us. The design of the stand is really inviting and that’s how I want people to feel, I want
them to feel invited when they come to work with us.” Terry O’Brien, CEO - Digital Wholesale Solutions
Customer Experience reigns supreme
Keynote speaker – Natalie Keightley, Solutions Marketing
Director, Avaya
“Every organisation is talking about the customer experience, every organisation
is looking at how they compete and differentiate in the marketplace based on the
experience. We are starting to see the products and service become less important
and the experience that is delivered become more important. When you look at
that experience the things which customers are demanding are quite exceptional.
They are looking for a connected experience, it doesn’t matter which channel they
use. They don’t care if it’s on the shop floor, on your website, or mobile application,
talking to someone or being assisted by a virtual assistant… they want that
experience to be connected. Secondly, they want it to be personalised. It has to be
targeted to them and relevant to them. It needs to be intuitive, gone are the days
where things are difficult or hard to find. Everything just needs to happen, it needs
to be proactive, it needs to be easy for customers to engage with organisations and
transact with them. Finally, it has to be relevant to that customer at the time they
need it. That’s where companies need to compete.
technology has been there for
a decade, just not necessarily
brought together. Cisco spent
an inordinate amount of
money securing it at a cloud
level but now it’s about the
partners understanding that
the opportunity and the value
isn’t in the integration. It’s in
the workplace transformation,
in the employee engagement
models, solving the business
problems.
“One of the examples I used
was as people move to more
agile workspaces. When you go
into enterprises today you could
spend the rst 30+ minutes
trying to nd somewhere to
work. If you have an eight-hour
working day and the rst 30
minutes is zero productivity
then agile is really taking away.
ey are the real business
problems to solve and how
we solve them with Machine
Learning, AI and other
capabilities becoming part of it.
e opportunities are
massive, the transitions to
these digitised workplaces are
underway and people are not
slowing down. But they are
not getting the rewards yet
because we are not solving
the right business problems.
Employee engagement, change
management and then solving
the business issues.”
When asked why did Cisco
choose Channel Live for this
message, Decker replied “As
a very Channel orientated
organisation we wanted to
make sure we were continuing
that education from dierent
technologies to cloud and how
that creates an opportunity to
make money and be part of
the journey from on-premise
to cloud which nearly every
organisation we talk to is on.”
Microsoft Teams is coming!
Naturally there was a lot of
chatter around Microsoft Teams
at the show this year. e
service has managed to surpass
13 million weekly users from
a standing start in about 18
months, this is nothing short of
incredible! As a predominantly
voice community there was
excitement, if a little trepidation
about the thought of Microsoft
potentially dominating the
market in a relatively short
space of time.
But have Microsoft got it
right for the Channel? Yes and
no, as one exhibitor told me
“If Microsoft ever get voice
right, we are all in a spot of
bother!” e verbatim quote
is unprintable, but you get the
idea.
Richard Whybra, Technical
Director of Taurus Clearer
Communication, said “We’ve
had internal questions around >
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