Publishing Our First Annual Report to Customers

Let me start with hello, and welcome to my very first blog post at Avaya. I’m only a few months into my new role, but I may have joined Avaya at the best possible time. Before joining, I was bullish on Avaya’s opportunity. The Customer Experience (CX) industry's total addressable market is around $20B today and we expect that to double before the end of the decade. Avaya has been a leader in the industry for decades and is especially well positioned in Enterprise CX. We serve many of the world’s top brands including the world’s top 10 airlines, top 10 automotive companies, top 19 global banks, and many more.

I was also aware of the significant transformation necessary to revitalize our iconic brand and ensure that Avaya isn’t only the leader of the past, but clearly establishes itself as the Enterprise CX leader of the future. What I hadn’t expected is how much progress my boss, our CEO Alan Masarek, and the thousands of Avaya team members around the world were able to make over the past year. A combination of new leadership, a clear corporate strategy, operational improvements, focus on culture, support from our board, and revitalized financial strength have positioned us to better serve our customers. It’s best described by our CEO this way: “Avaya is back!”

The most pleasant surprise for me has been how much we focus on our customers. We put customers at the center of almost every conversation we have. Whether it is investments in product, go-to-market, our partner ecosystem, customer success, or our internal success metrics – the conversations start and end with customer outcomes. I’m convinced this focus is, and will continue to be, a competitive differentiator for Avaya.

While many competitors offer a single path to innovation which typically requires a multi-year rip-and-replace initiative that creates business risk and often results in going backwards before innovating forward, Avaya has taken a different customer-centric approach focused on enabling the customer to chart their journey to innovation. We have a core strategic objective, and are committed to deliver against it, to enable our customers to choose their own path and offer the ability to innovate – whether it’s adding business-impacting digital, social, or AI capabilities – without causing business disruption.

Now, as Chief Marketing Officer, one of my big objectives is to improve communication with our customers. And when I say communication, I mean two-way communication. We will speak with you regularly and transparently. This has already started with our published roadmaps and financial transparency, but we are also increasing focus and investment in our “voice of the customer” program to ensure your voice guides our path forward.

Sometimes marketers get a reputation for making claims about their brands that they can’t back up. That may help things in the short term, but it never does in the long term. For me, the proof is in the results. If we are going to claim Avaya is back, we’d better be able to back it up. And while we still have significant transformation ahead of us, we have made incredible strides to better serve you.

That’s why I’m particularly proud this week to unveil the first edition of the Avaya Annual Report to Customers. Proud because this new report is full of proof points that show our transformation is working, and because it demonstrates how Avaya is helping its customers become more successful.

A significant milestone in our transformation was the transition from being a publicly traded company to one that is privately held. Public companies issue annual reports – primarily targeting investors, with a heavy emphasis on reporting financials as required by federal regulations – and rarely cater to customers seeking insights from their key technology partners. Our shift is more than just how we report, we’ve moved from the quarterly mindset of a publicly traded company focused on short-term wins as we are now free to focus more on long-term investments to better serve you.

In my short time here, I’ve been overwhelmed by how many customers and partners are openly rooting for our success. This week I’m in Dubai for GITEX Global, and we also have teams at Gartner Symposium/Expo in Orlando, Florida. A main emphasis at both shows has been on CX continuing to become an even bigger business differentiator and each time I hear a customer tell me how they are improving the CX of their customers together with Avaya, I’m inspired.

Whether it’s helping healthcare providers improve patient outcomes, secure solutions that create efficiencies for financial institutions interacting their customers, improving the ways governments interact with and serve their constituents, applying innovation to help educators facilitate learning for their students, or helping retailers differentiate with the best CX…customers globally trust and rely on Avaya to create meaningful experiences and better outcomes.

It has been a remarkable year for Avaya, and we are excited to share our journey with our valued customers. It’s no coincidence that we chose this week to publish a report to customers, with both the GITEX Global and Gartner Symposium customer events underway. We’ve been showcasing Avaya innovation and talking to attendees about how our customer experience solutions help them to innovate without disruption.

I invite you to explore our Annual Report to Customers, click into the details, share it with your colleagues and let us know where you’d like to learn more. Together, we are going to transform the Enterprise CX space, and I look forward to our conversations along the way.