The start of a new year brings fresh energy, motivation and commitment. We actively think about the opportunities that lie ahead, behaviors we want to change and what we want to accomplish in the coming months.
The same is true for companies. January is synonymous with sales kickoff meetings, rallying those on the front line and aligning everyone with the same priorities and goals. It’s something I look forward to every year.
I recently spent a few weeks at gatherings with our sales teams in Dallas and Munich. I loved hearing so many great insights about our customer successes and new challenges we can help them overcome. I also shared details about the latest steps we have taken in our strategy to help our customers transform their businesses in response to ever-increasing requirements for more speed, streamlined operations and better customer experiences.
As businesses use digital transformation to be more productive and effective, the role of communications and collaboration becomes even more important. Mitel is in a unique position in that we help our customers on their journey to the cloud in whatever way is best for their business. As I’ve said before, every business will move to the cloud, but that doesn’t mean customers want to be constrained by a single option or approach.
What has become very clear as we continue to engage with customers at varying stages of this journey is that not only are their technology needs different, but so is the way they want to interact with their technology providers and their expectations of the sales process and customer service experience.
All of our customers are focused on rewiring their businesses to connect people, things and information in new ways that make it easier for them to serve customers and improve their competitiveness. However, our UC customers operate very differently from our UCaaS customers, and their needs for how Mitel and our channel work with them are distinct.
To be the best partner we can to both sets of customers, we have refined our approach by establishing dedicated business units for UC and UCaaS. Our customers will now interact with us in a way that is finely-tuned to their expectations. Empowering our teams to focus on the distinct needs of our UC and UCaaS customers will not only allow us to improve our customers’ success but also better support our partners and drive growth as well.
2019 will be a pivotal year for companies like Mitel that support and enable the changes happening in business as a result of digital transformation. At the beginning of January, Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal talked to CIOs of leading companies who said digital transformation planning and testing is done and the priority is now executing the strategies put in place. Our sales people are hearing and seeing the same thing.
After two weeks of sales kickoff meetings, I’m confident we are ready and in a great position to take advantage of this opportunity. I came away with confirmation of our new business unit structure. I could feel the team’s excitement about the tremendous opportunity in the very fast-moving UCaaS market and our ability to give those customers what they need, when and how they need it. I felt the same energy for the UC market and Mitel’s ability to meet the complex requirements of private cloud customers. I heard remarks about how blown away our sales people were around the work we are doing with Amazon and Google. And most of all, I experienced the enthusiasm, commitment and focus on priorities so prevalent at this time of year, and which serves to jumpstart all of us on the right path to success.