The News: Avaya recently released communications about its financial progress since its completion of a financial transformation in May 2023. The company has added key executives and shared that it is seeing strong demand for AI-driven solutions as well as interest in CX and the cloud. More information on these latest Avaya developments can be found on the company’s website.
Avaya Making Strong Progress In Business and Product Enhancements
Analyst Take: Avaya is quickly emerging from its financial restructuring and has communicated progress not just on the financial front but also in product enhancements. In a recent analyst briefing focused on the company’s contact center portfolio, Avaya focused on its Avaya Experience Platform (AXP) offering, laying out solid progress made in both customer interest and product enhancements.
Financial, Customer, and Staffing Updates
Avaya has worked to get back to a position of financial strength and has done so at pace. Notable statistics from the update include:
- Cash and cash equivalents of greater than $600 million
- Debt of approximately $830 million, which is 75% lower than pre-recapitalization and with no maturities due until 2028
- The fulfillment of its remaining SEC reporting obligations, with the filing of the company’s Form 10-K for fiscal year (FY) 2022 and quarterly reports for Q3 of FY 2022 and the first quarter of FY 2023 with the SEC
- The addition of 599 new logos in the 3-month period from April through June, along with 39 deals with more than $1 million total contract value, and four deals with more than $5 million
Avaya also noted new clients and renewals including Victory Auto Group’s 50 locations across the US, the National Social Security Fund of Uganda, Ignite Telecom in Australia, Walmart Mexico, and TELMEX, among others. New C-level announcements include Amy O’Keefe, chief financial officer; Omar Javaid, chief product officer; and Josh Mueller, chief marketing officer.
AXP: Striving for Innovation and Differentiation
CEO Alan Masarek stated in the company’s press release that Anaya is investing in technology that brings innovation without disruption. In a recent analyst briefing session, Ahmed Helmy, global vice president, AXP Product Management, echoed this sentiment of helping customers move to other technologies, such as the cloud, at their own pace and with flexibility.
Helmy provided an update on AXP and shared background on its growth as well as product feature enhancements, indicating that the company is making fast progress with its cloud CX platform. In the past 8 months, the company has seen strong execution with AXP, now available in more than 80 countries, and plans to expand in Canada, Japan, and India by the middle of 2024.
In less than 8 months, more than 80 capabilities have been introduced within AXP, and Avaya is generally on pace with dropping new features every 2 weeks. According to Helmy, all capabilities in the diagram are available today, in different phases of maturity.
Other highlights include:
- Avaya is looking to create something with innovation and differentiation with true omnichannel at its core. The company is intent on having one connected platform, not just a lot of components brought together.
- A lot of the use cases have been designed with persona journeys in mind, with thought toward agents, supervisors, and customers.
- AI is of high interest to the customer base, and the platform leverages AI for noise removal and AI-powered guidance. The update also included a solid roadmap of proposed AI functionality.
- In keeping with the flexibility and go-at-your-own-pace theme, AXP Connect is an avenue for customers to keep their on-premises infrastructure and investment and then choose voice or digital capabilities from the Avaya cloud.
Although Avaya might be playing catch up in the contact center as a service (CCaaS) space, the company is showing good progress on many levels. The company has deep intellectual property that can be leveraged across the platform and the advantage of a large installed base of clients. There are more than 6 million contact center agents using Avaya solutions and an overall customer base that includes 90% of the largest US companies. According to the company, is has seen strong interest in AXP from not only its current customer base but new clients as well.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
CX Wins for Veeva, Forrester, Avaya, InMoment, and MoEngage
New Avaya-Alvaria Partnership to Focus on Proactive Customer Experience, Outbound Engagement
New Acquisitions by Braze, Kore Wireless, Cyara, and Dentsu; Avaya is Restructured
Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
She brings more than 20 years of experience in technology research and marketing; prior to her current role, she was a Research Analyst at Omdia, authoring market and ecosystem reports on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and User Interface technologies. Sherril was previously Manager of Market Research at Intrado Life and Safety, providing competitive analysis and intelligence, business development support, and analyst relations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
