Journeys with Avaya U.S. Roadshow Puts Migration Speed at the Center of Enterprise Modernization

CHICAGO, September 10, 2026 - Avaya wrapped the U.S. portion of its 2026 Journeys roadshow on September 2 at Rate Field, home of the Chicago White Sox, following summer stops in New York and Boston and an earlier event in Washington, D.C. Across the U.S. events, product demonstrations and customer stories showed two sides of enterprise modernization. 

Avaya is working to take time and manual effort out of migration, while customers retain control over where modernization starts and how quickly it moves. 

Customers set the pace for enterprise modernization  

At the Boston stop, Sean Reardon, Director of Voice Services at The Hanover Insurance Group, joined Avaya CRO/CXO, Marylou “ML” Maco, for a conversation about the insurer’s strategy for an AI-enabled, more personalized customer journey. Hanover’s modernization effort spans its contact center operations across the business and is expected to unfold over the next two to three years. 

The company is working with Avaya to evaluate how Avaya Infinity, Avaya’s platform for orchestrating service experiences across systems, data, AI, and workflows, can be introduced while maintaining its existing Avaya UC investments. Reardon described a phased approach in which the business determines the pace and sequence of individual changes.  

The strategy includes AI-enabled IVR, omnichannel capabilities, quality management, and workforce management. Hanover is also taking a deliberate approach to where AI belongs, using it to reduce friction and simplify routine interactions while preserving human involvement for more complex or emotionally sensitive moments such as the first notice of loss after an accident or home fire. 

Reardon said the quality of the technology partnership is an important part of navigating that change. 

“You want to partner with someone who you feel is advocating for you, checking in, keeping you aware of changes in the industry, knowing me as a customer and knowing my company and my team. I’ve seen that from Avaya since I started. That’s what I look for—advocacy, follow-through, and overall support.”

 

AI-assisted Contact Center Modernization Cuts Manual Migration Work 

Among the most tangible demonstrations across the Journeys events was Avaya’s AI-assisted workflow modernization approach for Avaya Infinity, which can compress months of manual discovery and reconstruction into hours while preserving proven business logic. 

Avaya CTO, David Funck, showed the technology analyze and reconstruct an existing customer workflow in minutes and framed the demonstration around a challenge many long-standing Avaya customers know well. 

“Our customers may have integrations in Avaya Aura and Avaya Call Center Elite that were built by someone who left the company 15 years ago, and they still need those integrations to run. We need to account for that in our next-generation plan. The whole idea is to make the modernization process as frictionless as possible.”

 

Avaya Services teams are already using the capability to support customer modernization projects, with plans to extend access to partners. 

Avaya Nexus Brings Speed to Mission-critical Communications  

The same focus on simplifying modernization is carried into Avaya Nexus, Avaya’s next-generation platform for mission-critical voice and communications environments. At the Chicago stop, Darrell Butler, Senior Director of Product Management at Avaya, said a new Avaya Nexus environment went from order to a working system in approximately 3.5 hours. 

Butler also pointed to the potential economic impact of changing how enterprises operate and maintain their communications environments. 

“For a 5,000-user environment, we compared the five-year total cost of ownership of running a traditional system with consuming Avaya Nexus as a service. We saw approximately a 45 to 50 percent reduction.”

 

The model accounts for lower infrastructure and operational costs, including a shift from major upgrade projects to managed quarterly releases. 

Conduent Begins Its Avaya Infinity Migration  

In Chicago, Mark J. Arensdorf, Senior Director of Global Voice Infrastructure Services at Conduent, discussed the company’s decision to adopt Avaya Infinity as it consolidates a communications environment shaped by years of acquisitions and technology debt. 

Mark J. Arensdorf of Conduent joins Avaya CRO/CXO Marylou “ML” Maco at Avaya Journeys Chicago to discuss enterprise modernization, AI, and implementation speed.

Conduent supports roughly 20,000 contact center agents across hundreds of commercial and government clients. The company is beginning its Avaya Infinity deployment with a goal of reducing the number of systems it has to manage while creating a more unified environment for new capabilities. 

Implementation speed is a major consideration. Arensdorf said Conduent is working to reduce some client implementation cycles from roughly 12 months to about two months because delays can directly affect how quickly the company begins realizing revenue from a new contract. On a three-year contract, he noted, spending the first year building and implementing the solution can mean losing a full year of revenue. 

Arensdorf said the relationship with Avaya was also part of the decision to move forward.

“The Avaya team we work with listens, helps provide guidance and direction where we need it, and has been a really strong partner.”

 

Journeys with Avaya continues in cities around the world, bringing customers, partners, and experts together to explore how AI, cloud, and next-generation communications are shaping customer and critical experiences. Learn more about upcoming Avaya events.