NEC Australia revamps UC Group partner program

The company is also looking to recruit partners.

NEC expects the program to promote customer loyalty, confidence in a partner's ability to deliver projects, reduce the business risk for NEC partners and customers by ensuring all partners are skilled to limit the chance of project failures.

It will allow the most successful partners to access higher levels of support from NEC and will provide partners with new levels of training, technical and sales support, procedures and tools.

Bob Lanigan, general manager UCG, NEC Australia said the partner program has been in place for some 20 years which has been refined over the years but with IP telephony and people now using more technology integrated into their business there is a need to change its partner model.

"The marketplace has changed," he said.

"Buyers have become more demanding and want more sophisticated solutions. It is important that we take the knowledge and learning we have extracted from our customer base and put it out there for our channel to deliver a better outcome to end users."

Lanigan said the program will allow its business partners to focus on their technology expertise and services and moving forward, there will be a closer relationship between NEC and its business partner community.

"UC, as an example, is a fast growing market that NEC is looking to capitalise on; we want to ensure our partners are equipped to share and contribute to our success in this space," he added.

NEC will award accreditation depending on a partner's technical specialisations, such as application development or design expertise, and business competencies, such as service and support capabilities and customer satisfaction.

The company currently has over 140 partners in the IP and telephony market and plans to accredit them all over the following months.