Mitel, a unified communications provider, has updated its North American channel program with the creation of the Authorized Partner Service Program (APSP). The APSP shifts Mitel’s services work to local partners, the first step to fulfilling Mitel’s goal of being a fully channel-driven organization.
“We made a conscious decision to eliminate channel conflict,” says Renato Mariani, vice president of field marketing at Mitel. “For new business opportunities going forward, we will not be selling direct unless there is a specific request from an enterprise customer.” All new business prospects for Mitel will be fulfilled through the channel, and Mitel will develop lead generation through its contact center.
Through the APSP, Mitel will be changing the way it fulfills its existing base of direct customers. Mitel will retain the contracts, but will subcontract the work to partners, who will provide the local maintenance and technical services. Mitel will enable the subcontracted partners by making logistics management capabilities available.
“It provides partners an engagement in another set of business, gives them a revenue stream, and it further expands our partner community business relationship into that base,” says Stan Holcomb, vice president of global services at Mitel.
Mitel is also offering additional advanced services to its partners that go beyond standard services, like infrastructure upgrades or optimization, and enable partners in deployment. According to Holcomb, Mitel is developing a portfolio specifically tailored to augment partners’ capabilities and accelerate the deployment of Mitel products.
“We can provide a turnkey advanced services wrapper [that partners] can make use of, like database migrations or SIP trunking migrations, that we would perform,” says Holcomb. “The partners provide program management, as they’re in front of the customers locally, and the services are delivered by remote access to systems. We act as a subcontractor to our partners providing the services.”
For more information, visit http://www.mitel.com.
